When Wang Wei was in operation｜Say a few words, “Xiaoguo was fined 13.35 million”

The first trending topic today is that Xiaoguo Culture, a well-known domestic stand-up comedy company, was fined 13.35 million yuan and indefinitely banned from performing in Beijing.

The origin of the matter is that in a stand-up comedy performance in Beijing by Xiaoguo Culture, the actor Li Haoshi (known in the industry as House) told a joke, the gist of which was:

I rescued two stray dogs in Shanghai, but it’s not really rescuing, because they are at the top of the food chain on the mountain, and they are different from other dogs. Other dogs are very cute, but these two dogs are very combative. When they chase squirrels, they are just like in the animal world, very fierce. When I saw them, I thought of eight words, ‘Excellent style, capable of winning battles.’

Recording and filming are prohibited at stand-up comedy performances. However, there were people who claimed to be audience members who exposed the matter on Weibo and commented: “If this is unintentional, then I advise you to delete it next time; if this is intentional, then I think you are courting death… Your joke insults the people’s soldiers.”

Because it involved words like “patriotic” and “military,” the matter escalated especially quickly. After the on-site recording was released online, a group of patriotic big Vs became excited. They accused this of insulting the military and the people’s soldiers. Some said that the person involved should be arrested and imprisoned for several years for insulting the military, and others said that Xiaoguo Culture should be indefinitely banned from performing.

Although Xiaoguo Company and the person involved, Li Haoshi, issued apologies on the day of the incident. Among them, Li Haoshi was indefinitely suspended from performing by Xiaoguo. However, ending the performance life of a stand-up comedian cannot quell the anger online. Some people online called for, “Everyone, give it some strength… let them pay the price.”

Yesterday, this phrase “let them pay the price” made me want to write something. I wrote half of it, and then I felt something was wrong. In view of my years of experience writing about social hot topics, I felt that this matter would have a follow-up today, and I still had to put it aside. Sure enough, today those who should have appeared have appeared, and the punishment has also come.

The Beijing Municipal Culture Market Comprehensive Law Enforcement Team, after receiving reports from the public, established a special investigation team for this matter. Today, it made a decision on Xiaoguo Culture: confiscate operating income of 1.32 million yuan, fine 13.35 million yuan, and indefinitely suspend all performances in Beijing. The basis for the punishment is that “the performance contained a serious insult to the people’s army, causing a negative social impact.”

After calculating, it’s a fine of 1.83 million yuan per character.

A reader living in Shanghai, who usually enjoys watching stand-up comedy performances.

She left me a message: “Teacher Li, this matter is so upsetting.” What upsets her is not that Xiaoguo was fined or that the stand-up comedian was banned from performing. It’s why everyone thinks this way. This matter, these eight words, if some people think it’s offensive and some don’t, if everyone can debate normally, and the person involved and the company involved come out to apologize, letting this industry, the actors, and young people in society understand the boundaries of stand-up comedy creation, and which points about the military and soldiers cannot be joked about, this is very normal. But now, why can’t there be arguments and discussions, and why is public opinion always one-sided?

She said, “Teacher Li, can you write a few sentences?”

What should I write? The strange wind of public opinion is not new today. In the past few years, I have written about the harm of reporting to the entire society, and I have also written about the internet’s hunt for anti-revolutionaries. In the end, every ordinary person is hurt. The formation and development of the entire internet ecosystem today must have a foundation, a bottom-level logic for its existence. And each of us, to a greater or lesser extent, participates in it.

In 2021, the animated film “Lion Boy” was released. Because the eyes of the main characters looked “slanted,” the entire internet said that the character design of the film was suspected of insulting China. I wrote an article at the time, which attracted a lot of abuse, saying that I was licking and whitewashing. Even some old readers didn’t understand, feeling that you saw such ugly squinting eyes and slanted eyes, why weren’t you angry? Have you ever thought that today’s “excellent style, capable of winning battles” of Xiaoguo Culture, to some extent, is the same situation as that day, and the underlying logic is the same.

After watching the movie “Lion Boy,” you think the character design inside is ugly and you don’t like it, which is very normal. I also think it’s not good-looking. You want to curse a few words, just curse as you please. But if you insist on saying that any character design with squinting eyes, wide eye spacing, and slanted eyes is insulting China, I think this is very inexplicable, but I can tolerate it and respect it. After all, everyone has their own views and opinions.

But a person, because they don’t like something, says that others creating this thing is malicious, is a cultural crime, is selling out the country and insulting China, and must nail the person to the pillar of shame of a political prisoner. I think this person is purely bad.

And not only does he nail others himself, but he also gathers so-called patriotic traffic online, using maliciously fabricated or taken-out-of-context information, using煽动的 language, and solemnly asserting that the main creative team is deliberately insulting China and selling out the country for glory. This person is not only bad, but also has ulterior motives. He is doing the most despicable business of this era.

Normal people will not be so “high-minded.” The expression of a normal society is not like this.

Those who see the patriotic big Vs waving their flags, their blood rushes to their heads, their whole bodies explode with G-spots, they climb to the moral high ground in excitement, follow along and curse and spit, and want to step on anyone who falls to the ground, they are both stupid and bad.

They are people with mental problems who cannot be awakened.

The Xiaoguo incident this time is the same.

You can think that this metaphor is not good, inappropriate, you can also think that this metaphor is offensive, and ask the person involved and the company to come out and apologize, and guarantee that they will never make the same mistake again. Or you can ask the person involved to withdraw from the industry, that’s fine. This is not a problem. But you cannot hang the person and the company on the lamppost because of these eight words. Do not, because of these eight words, gather so-called traffic online, report everywhere, shout and kill everywhere, and seize a clue to put the person and the company to death.

This is not normal.

I’m saying this not to speak for Xiaoguo and House. I don’t agree with making a big fuss because of these eight words. If this sentence is not good, then stay with the criticism of this sentence. You cannot say that the stand-up comedy industry is a poisonous weed because of these eight words, and indefinitely ban it, or call for a strict review mechanism.

We should have boundaries when discussing a literary event.

We can criticize a person, criticize a company, but we cannot have a movement-style social death.

If our public opinion is accustomed to this kind of “big fanfare” and “major issues of right and wrong,” accustomed to being ruined because of touching a certain sensitive topic, in the end, the living space of every normal person will be compressed.

The whole society will be lifeless.

On this land, it is already very difficult to produce original output.

If because of these eight words, an industry that has taken several years to be reborn is destroyed like this. What kind of innovation do you still hope this society will have? Those who write songs, dare to write what lyrics, those who paint, dare to explore what new themes, those who do plays, it is estimated that they want to die when they see the script.

Using a politically incorrect magnifying glass to look at an industry, don’t expect this industry to have any innovation.

And a society without innovation has no future.

Stand-up comedy is actually very difficult to do in China, and it’s also okay to say that it’s difficult to survive.

Stand-up comedy comes from the West and is known as the art of “offense.” In fact, the underlying logic of this art form is not quite compatible with the genes of our nation. We Chinese people emphasize etiquette, emphasize face, and like to say auspicious words when we meet. When we hear something unpleasant, we are easily nervous and fragile. Humor, wit, banter, and appropriate satire, in our land, whether it is the individual or the environment, is very difficult to survive and not easy to be clever.

On the one hand, our audience is fragile. On the other hand, our market is tense.

I have been to two stand-up comedy shows.

The feeling on the scene is actually not very good. The actor’s script, in addition to being reviewed by the company, also needs to be submitted to several regulatory departments for review, and can only be performed after approval. This greatly filters out some of the charm of the performance. In order to prevent people from recording and filming, and also to prevent actors from temporarily exceeding their performance, there are usually staff members patrolling the scene. In some larger performances in the city, the cultural law enforcement department will also send people to the scene to supervise. Once it is found that an actor has temporarily added a joke or exceeded their performance, the performance will be stopped, and even the company and the artist will be fined. Previously, similar incidents have occurred in Chengdu.

This kind of stand-up comedy cannot be good-looking.

Stand-up comedy performances are about liveliness, about daring to touch some daily pain points, blind spots, and taboos, exploring a little bit of a sense of boundaries, and making people have new feelings about life while smiling knowingly.

And these filters have filtered out the “liveliness” of the actors and language.

Today, another filter has been added.