It is true that The Voice of China received a lot of negative criticism from the public. Nevertheless, is the show unpleasant to watch? Is it really worthless or does not have values? Analyzing the script and the recording process of this reality television show will provide a different answer.
From the interview with a famous scriptwriter—Chen Lan, the most important takeaway is that the scriptwriting process requires patience and mutual support. Chen is a professional scriptwriter and currently lives in Chengdu, China. Her representative works include Chu Qiao Zhuan, a story about a maverick female slave, who experiences betrayal, love, and faith, in a process of helping to establish a new regime, and Youth, a story mainly about women’s career paths and how they struggle and grow in the bumpy road to promotion.
Source: Baidu Baike, https://baike.baidu.com/item/陈岚/22072080?fr=aladdin
As a professional and experienced scriptwriter, Chen stresses the importance and necessity of reading and how years of reading she had assists her in the writing process. She also describes the scriptwriting career as a never-ending learning process.
“In college, my major is history so I read tons of books. Beside reading academic books and classics, I also read novels for fun. Before starting a career as a scriptwriter, I write novels in my leisure time and upload them on internet to get feedback”(Lan) [1] .
In 2012, Chen went to Shanghai for one of the recording scenes of The Voice of China to learn about the script and the production process. Interestingly, Chen mentioned the copyright problem and she gave a very different explanation: The Voice of China’s script is officially bought from Netherland so that it does not counts as plagiarism, as most audiences think about. In fact, nowadays there are legal business of reselling the script as an intermediary operation. “This is how the TV industry works to make money and these innovative businesses actually form bonds between countries and could connect people together to certain degree,” said Chen.
Still, people question the future popularity of the show in that the script and content might not adapt to the cultural and social context in China, however, according to Chen as well as a published article on one of the famous social media sites named Sohu, The Voice China’s production team is really making a hard effort to incorporate new changes in the show and they are indeed very detailed, including the plot design, lighting, theme music, stage design, camera shot, different angles and etc.[2] To think from this angle, the intended design to include many contestants that have unique life stories is also part of the team’s endeavor. Even if audiences will likely get tired of this entertainment hype, The Voice of China has devoted time, energy, money and human resources in hope to make the the show successful.
To evaluate how “real” is The Voice of China is extremely difficult because in the music and television industry, people do not have a standard or rigid definition toward the “Reality television”—it is flexible. In addition, it is simply superficial and amateur to decline the success of a reality television program only based on whether it has a written script or not. Having a written script beforehand does not mean to make decisions on everything that is going to happen in the future, nor does it mean to follow everything that is on the papers. The Voice of China actually has very detailed and elaborate written script and this even surprises Lan when she is in the recording scene: “I was shocked but also awed at how they write the script. I think it signifies the team’s professionalism and its attitude to make the program look better.”
[1] Lan Chen, interviewed by Yaxin (Elva) Xiao, Richmond, Virginia, October 18th, 2019.
[2] Sohu, “The Voice of China: in Hope to Make the Show like a Documentary,” Daily News Report (Tiantian Xin Bao), http://roll.sohu.com/20120804/n349844575.shtml