介绍:
【特别感谢热心听友琅琅-FMU-曹英哲Mobey帮忙听写本篇文稿】
Heyang: The annual CCTV Spring Festival Gala has been an important part of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration. This year’s CCTV Spring Festival mascot failed to make a good first impression, as many netizens called it "too ugly". What do you think? And why do people care?
Do you have the heart to say this money mascot is just too ugly?
Brian: I certainly think you can. I don’t think it’s necessarily ugly per se, but if you want to do that, I think that’s fine. I suppose that people who involved in might hurt their feelings, but it should be said the person who designs the original thing is not the person who designs the official version. It was Han Meilin who designs the 2008 Olympic Fuwa mascot. He provided this what i think most people would agree looks pretty cute Monkey face as a kind of concept mascot. And then it went to, I think, CCTV or somewhere, and it comes out with this full bodied, slightly different stylistically looking mascot that some people have called. Perhaps not unduly ugly.
Luo Yu: right, that’s also my concern as well. I mean if you look at this painter, Han Meilin, is actually very famous when it comes to contemporary art here in China, maybe he’s not as famous as Mr. Fan Zeng and Huang Yongyu, but it’s definitely fantastic especially he’s very famous for painting these monkeys. My wonder though is why there are so many people who are originally very happy about the original design. However they raised so many concerns there on the internet. Saying that well, these are not the exact reflection of the original ink painting and that’s also my concern because if you look at this original painting, you know, you see the shaggy furs of this monkey very cute, three colors but you also see the gradual changes there on the faces between different colors, however, if you look at this 3 dimensional monkey, it’s like the monkey is balding, and it reminds a lot of people of the traffic lights, you know, just putting three colors together, very rigid very stiff, and not very cute, I have to say, so is it how can we modernize the ink painting. Well, from the Chinese traditional way, and to the modern way, and another way is that, you know, this painter, Han Meilin, said, I have nothing to do with the 3D design, I mean I just design the head of this monkey, what happened next after my painting is that something I’m totally not familiar with. So probably in the future, if you want to design this 3D version of the mascot, you want to display it to the national audience, probably CCTV should have had some consultations, or some sort of discussions with original designer who is Han Meilin.
HY: Yeah well I do agree with you guys that when you try to make a product to leap out of the paper, and that process can be done in a really great way or in a really bad way, and we are seeing the latter here. As a whole bunch of our wechat listeners seem to agree with this point, there’s a Lin Xuebi and there’s Jessie and there’s also some other guys think that they’s something drastically wrong that’s been transformed into this 3D monkey, and no wonder the artist himself is not happy with the results.
Brian: well I think part of it is what I’ve seen online described as tumors, these two little balls by the monkey’s face. (what are they?) well, that’s the thing. So in the picture, the original one by HanMeiling, it looks like maybe this is just a very cutified version of hands or something coz it’s just the face there’s no body. And so maybe it was hands I don’t know what but whatever it was in the 3D version, the monkey has a head, has a body, has a tail, it has arms, and these two little balls whatever, orbs next to its face, and I don’t know what it is.
LY: the terminology of the two balls is called “cheek pouch” which is an organ that stores food temporarily for the monkey. (I don’t think that’s what a real monkey’s cheek pouch looks like hahaha)
HY: well when it’s art, there’s a certain level of exaggeration and the funniest meme I saw out of this is when some people turn those two little balls into two grenades and throw it at other ugly mascots, and that’s a great idea, and why do you guys think that this is something people care about. Why?
Brian: I think people like to rag on the spring festival gala and things related to it.
LY: And also it’s the year of the monkey. And people have to be concerned about the mascot of the year of monkey.
HY: Yeah no wonder it is the year of this animal, so of course everybody’s putting all this attention onto this little monkey and we will talk a little bit more about this as messages have been pouring in regarding it. Why do you think people are slamming it, is it Chunwan, spring festival gala, a bit of a yesterday’s signature for that special day？
