Everything is fine： the rampant family of origin determinism reinforces the stereotype of class.

The popularity of "Everything’s Fine" has set off a discussion about "Family of origin". From Fan Shengmei and Andy in Ode to Joy to Su Mingyu and Su Mingcheng in Everything is Fine, the drama about family in recent years always leads to "family of origin determinism", and the view that family decides character and even fate is deeply imprinted on the characters, which has also become a gimmick that the media is keen on. Family is important, but can it really determine a person’s everything? Especially in this environment that advocates "parents are evil", exaggerating the shortcomings of the family can really let us know the truth of life?

In fact, "family of origin Determinism" caters to the long-suppressed negative emotions of the public, especially those who are angry with their parents, dissatisfied with their own environment, and class-based stereotypes among different groups, which can be expressed from "family of origin Determinism".

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The rampant family of origin determinism reinforced the stereotype of the class.

Zongcheng

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How did the concept of "family of origin" catch on?

▲ In Sina Weibo, netizens ridiculed Su Daqiang, the role of the TV series "Everything is Fine".

The popularity of "Everything’s Fine" has set off a discussion about "Family of origin". From Fan Shengmei and Andy in Ode to Joy to Su Mingyu and Su Mingcheng in Everything is Fine, the drama about family in recent years always leads to "family of origin determinism", and the view that family decides character and even fate is deeply imprinted on the characters, which has also become a gimmick that the media is keen on. As a result, "family of origin determinism" is rampant, and it has become a craze to punish parents. It seems that all the problems in the world can be attributed to the family.

At the same time, people pay more and more attention to each other’s origin in interpersonal communication, and even adopt the method of backward thinking. According to a person’s established personality, taste and even values, people blame their families for these things. For example, in a common deduction, many commentators will blame a person’s inferiority, violence and vulgarity on his bottom family and sum up the fate of others with very simple logic.

Family is important, but can it really determine a person’s everything? Especially in this environment that advocates "parents are evil", exaggerating the shortcomings of the family can really let us know the truth of life?

When "family of origin determinism" overflows, the complicated life evolution is replaced by simple linear thinking, and our conclusion is not the truth, but the stereotype of the class is reinforced.

As early as the 19th century, "family of origin determinism" appeared in novels. At that time, there were no computers and televisions in the world, and novels were citizens’ favorite pastimes. In order to cater to the market, novelists liked to write novels related to class collision.For example, Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Hardy’s Tess of the D ‘Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, etc., children from rural areas are often simple, pure and full of determination to struggle, while those from noble families are lazy, weak and even morally corrupt. Novelists didn’t put forward the concept of "family of origin" directly, but they advocated "birth determines character" and "character is fate". In order to take care of readers’ reading experience and create a strong conflict, these novels all have obvious binary opposition, such as the opposition between the bottom and nobles, the opposition between poor boys and rich girls, the opposition between good and evil, and the opposition between rural areas and cities, which are the sources of modern urban drama.

In modern times, the concept of "family of origin" was put forward by American psychiatrist Murray Bowen in the 1960s.It originally refers to a person’s family before adulthood, and it was not until the beginning of this century that the word became popular in China. With the establishment of Douban’s "Parents Are Evil" group and the popularity of the book "Giant Baby Country", "family of origin" has become a hot word on the Internet.

Wu Zhihong used a lot of methods to analyze the family in The Kingdom of Giant Babies, and took the family as the decisive factor. As a veteran of psychological marketing, he knew well the propagation law of popular media, so he used the words of "Giant Babies", "Chinese Family", "Mutual Harmful Society" and "Chinese Good Man" in the book. This book is not new, but it knows the market very well.

The popularity of "family of origin" is not only promoted by books and TV series, but also due to deeper historical background.China is a country with a deep parental culture. From patriarchal clan system to firstborn inheritance system, the political logic in ancient China is closely related to the family, and local governance is also inseparable from the wealthy families led by local gentry. Chinese relies on large and small families and relatives to build a huge human society, and the family structure with patriarchy as the core affects the growth of children. In modern times, especially under the background of the market economy dominated by neoliberalism, the contradiction between classical families and contemporary youth has become more and more serious. The eastward spread of affirmative thoughts has impacted the patriarchal center, while the liberal thoughts have made young people hate the bondage of family more and more.

With the loosening of family-oriented concept, family of origin’s problems have been put on the table, and they are getting more and more prosperous under the agitation of class anxiety. Behind this wave of family of origin’s discussion is not only the value division of two generations, but also the children’s worries about their identity and status.

The discussion of "family of origin" on the Internet focuses on denouncing parents. Take the discussion between Ode to Joy and Everything is Fine as an example: In Ode to Joy, Fan Shengmei’s mother is like a burden. In Everything’s Fine, Su Daqiang, the father of Su family, is also tiring. Borrowing money, borrowing money or borrowing money, cheat people, cheat people or cheat people, the audience resonated in the experience of Fan Shengmei and Su Mingyu, but they were full of helplessness and boredom with Fan Mu and Su Daqiang.

In July, 2018, Beijing Times Chinese Bookstore also published a book called family of origin, with the subtitle "How to Repair Your Personality Defects". The original name of this book was "Toxic Parents" (both parents are toxic), and the author Susan Forward described many incompetent parents, such as manipulative parents, alcoholic parents, physically abusive parents, verbally abusive parents and sexually abusive parents.

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"family of origin determinism" in film and television dramas, parents who are typed.

▲ TV series "Everything is fine" stills

"Everything is OK" and "Ode to Joy" have changed the parents’ perspective of educational dramas in the past, and faced up to their parents’ shortcomings. Together with the "Parents are evil" group, they both provided the view that "parents can be criticized or even denied", which is their unique feature in China’s film and television dramas which are full of family-orientation. However, in order to cater to the market, they filled too many stereotypes in character design, and followed the typical melodrama mode in dramatic conflicts, which stimulated the audience’s cool points, but made people logistics in types.

Everything is fine is a good play, but in some places, it pursues dramatic conflict too much, which dilutes the sense of reality.For example, Su Daqiang, played by Dahong Ni, is an old man who has been suppressed by his wife for many years. He loves calculating and secretly caring for others. He has some common habits of his parents. However, with the development of the plot, the contradiction induced by Dahong Ni gradually became a contradiction for the sake of contradiction. In the part involving him, the screenwriter pushed what he did to the extreme surface. In the end, he was like a laundry list, and the shortcomings of his parents were filled in. It seemed to make people itch. If you think about it carefully, it was still too dramatic.

Su Daqiang’s role, played by Dahong Ni, is no problem, mainly the character design of the script. The screenwriter wants to highlight family of origin’s problems so much that he wants to use Su Daqiang as the trigger point of drama contradiction, so that he pushes too hard.

There are similarities at the beginning. Xiao Mingyu complained that her mother was partial. Her mother said bluntly, we will not invest in you because you are a girl. Here, the screenwriter wants to highlight the son preference of the Su family and arouse the audience’s resonance, but such a straightforward approach is rough and different from the experience of most Chinese people. Chinese likes to hide his words, saying good things to his face and bad things to his face. The so-called secret tricks, but most of them don’t say it very bluntly like Su Mu in the play. Not to mention that because of the preference for boys in her bones, when her daughter runs away from home, her mother completely ignores her.

Film and television dramas need to be dramatized, but if conflicts are imposed to cater to the audience’s cool points and pain points, not only will the proper limit of drama be lost, but also the characters will be exposed to the risk of facial makeup.Nowadays, "hot thinking" is popular in film and television dramas. It is said that writers should actively discuss what ideas have hot potential when they hold a scriptwriting meeting. In order to respond to the market, they will rub hot spots in the script and even exaggerate everything in order to arouse the audience’s emotions. Over time, writing a script is like writing a WeChat official account push, racking their brains to cater to hot spots and output opinions. However, film and television dramas are not public articles after all, and if conflicts are imposed for too long, the audience will be tired.

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"family of origin determinism" can’t stand scrutiny.

▲ TV series "Everything is fine" stills

No matter "family of origin’s determinism" or "family decides personality", there is no strict logic in the argument. Psychologists such as Wu Zhihong only listed a series of cases in which families affected their children, supplemented by big words in new bottles and old wine, to illustrate their views. However, his argumentation process only explained the influence relationship between the two (family-children), and could not be pushed to one side to decide the other.

In fact, "family of origin determinism" has long been refuted in the research of psychologists Neiderhiser, Vukasovi?, Bratko and Briley. They found with rigorous experiments and data.: "About 40% of our personality comes from congenital genetic factors, 60% comes from the influence of non-shared environment, and is hardly influenced by shared environment."

"Behavioral Genetics" edited by Robert Plomin also pointed outThe main characteristics we have (such as intelligence, emotion, personality and health) are either most influenced by nature or most influenced by non-shared environment, but often little influenced by shared environment.(Quoted from "family of origin is not the root of all kinds of psychological problems") family of origin, which the audience is keen to talk about, is part of the shared environment.

Coincidentally, Judith Harris, the author of The Myth of Education, also stressed thatThe proportion of direct influence of family education on children’s adult personality is less than 10%.

The argument of "family of origin determinism" is not sufficient. Why can it be popular in public opinion? Because it caters to the long-suppressed negative emotions of the public, especially those anger towards parents, dissatisfaction with their own environment, and class-based stereotypes among different groups, which can be expressed from "family of origin determinism".

These stereotypes are not only aimed at the bottom, but also pervade all classes. The poor families will have parents’ discord and domestic violence, and the rich family of origin will also have divorced, husband and wife’s discord and indifferent children. However, in the discourse of "family of origin determinism", different families are smeared with heavy stereotypes, as if the poor must be uneducated and vulgar, and the rich must be intoxicated and arrogant and superior, which is derived from it.These superficial binary opposition views, originally just narrative strategies of popular novels, are now widely used in point of view preaching. Instead of solving practical problems, they intensify people’s hatred of the other and deepen stereotypes, but after the noise, nothing really valuable is left.