Yet another commissioned piece from *China Science Daily*.
Last time, I finished the commissioned piece in half a day; perhaps that efficiency left a good impression on the paper. This time they came looking for me again to write something, and lately I’ve been so busy I’m almost falling ill. I had originally meant to refuse, but after taking a look at the topic and thinking I’d probably be able to dash off something fairly quickly, I tried writing it. In the end I finished it in two hours, meals included. It was, after all, just an essay, so the standards didn’t need to be too high, and that was the version I submitted.
Reflecting on why my blog posts have been getting fewer and fewer, the main reason is still a lack of motivation, and nobody is pushing me. In fact, even when I’m busiest, the time I waste every day in a daze is far more than two hours. Writing a thousand or so characters a day is really the very least one should do. But laziness has grown ever more severe; once I put down the habit of writing, laziness itself became a habit. That really shouldn’t be the case.
Although I’ve said this several times before, the blog really is going to be redesigned… The whole theme will be changed, the directory structure completely rebuilt, and updates will gradually return to the daily routine. I ask all readers to supervise me and keep nudging me onward (the redesign will be completed before mid-July).
The published version can be found at http://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2017/6/380342.shtm?from=singlemessage Below is my submitted version
Recently, the “acting career” of “Expert Liu Hongbin” has been exposed, and people discovered that over the past three years she has appeared across major satellite TV stations, playing all kinds of identities—heir to Miao medicine, Peking University expert, expert in traditional Chinese medicine and health preservation, descendant of an imperial medical family, and so on—using the format of health-preservation programs to sell medicine.
Although netizens all marveled that this “veteran actress” deserved an Oscar, in general, the viewers who can comment like this are probably not the sort who would be taken in by her performance. These health-preservation programs also look extremely crude and low-grade; even if the scam hadn’t been exposed, we wouldn’t believe them. But if we don’t believe them, someone else certainly does. Liu Hongbin’s “busyness” also proves that this sort of scam really does have a considerable market, and there are indeed quite a few viewers moved by the performance of this old “expert.”
Liu Hongbin is obviously not an isolated case. There are plenty of health-preservation programs that deceive people by borrowing the name of “experts.” Netizens are mostly well aware of this too; it’s just that, unlike Liu Hongbin, they haven’t blown up into a hot topic.
So why have such swindlers been able to run rampant until now? Why can such low-grade tricks enjoy such broad popularity?
Coincidentally, just a few days ago, director Feng Xiaogang provided an “answer.” He said: “Why are there so many trash movies in China? Isn’t it because there are so many trash audiences? If you don’t turn up to support them, then there won’t be such things; yet trash box-office numbers often turn out very good.”
Feng’s words do make some sense. In any case, the reason trash films are mass-produced is that there really are that many people willing to pay for them. Once there are enough people showing up in support, demand is there in the market, and naturally someone will produce those things. In this respect, the production of “health-preservation programs” follows much the same logic as “trash movies”: if nobody paid, there would naturally not be so many programs. The fact that Old Lady Liu Hongbin is so busy rushing from one venue to another also confirms that our market environment is still in the situation of “too many fools, not enough swindlers.”
But it is one thing for viewers to pay for trash movies; it is another thing entirely to make viewers pay for the fact that trash movies exist in large numbers. People’s Daily’s commentary on Feng’s remark is also quite reasonable: viewers’ taste and the market environment themselves are guided by film works; filmmakers should not blame the audience, for the audience is also a victim of bad films, and what is needed is to “guide the film market with good works.” In fact, this was more or less what Feng Xiaogang himself meant. After lashing out at “trash audiences,” he emphasized that “the audience is not a director’s God, but the director’s opponent.” That too was really a way of saying that one should guide and change the audience’s taste.
The problem of health-preservation experts is similar. Certainly there are many viewers who pay for health-preservation scams, but they too are victims. To make them bear the main responsibility for the overall environment of science communication is unfair.
From the standpoint of the “producers” of science communication, blaming the audience for having low standards is even more a kind of shirking responsibility—if no one watches more rigorous, higher-end programs, then one can only produce content that the masses like to see.
Despising the audience and pandering to the audience are in fact very close attitudes. Those truly expert scholars and serious scientific researchers often look down on “the audience”; feeling that their tastes are too refined for the common crowd, they assume ordinary people anyway cannot understand such specialized knowledge, and therefore they simply do not take the cause of science communication seriously at all. As for the makers of programs in the mass media, whether it is science popularization shows like *Approaching Science*, which pursue ratings, or health-preservation programs whose aim is to swindle money, they certainly do take the audience seriously, catering to whatever the audience likes. But in essence they are just the same: they too look down on the audience, treating viewers as lambs to be slaughtered, as “resources.”
Complaining that the audience does not know how to appreciate high-end content, or currying favor with the audience in order to produce low-end content—these two kinds of people actually have roughly the same attitude toward “the audience.” The audience is seen as dead “resources,” not living “opponents.” In fact, the audience is neither “trash” nor “God”; like producers, the audience is an active agent and a participant in communication.
Between content producers and audiences, apart from contempt and flattery, there can of course be a more equal relationship: that is, the relationship of opponents. Feng Xiaogang put it quite well: “Respect the audience as you would respect an opponent; respect the audience’s inner world. Respecting the audience’s feelings and respecting the money in the audience’s pocket are two different things.”
And this attitude of “respecting the opponent” is precisely what our present-day “science popularization industry” lacks. Serious experts and scholars look down on those “trash audiences,” and so those audiences’ needs are naturally filled by health-preservation experts. Once the pseudo-experts have occupied the market, this segment of the audience is subjected even more to the contempt of “high-end” people, and they are even less taken seriously in dialogue with them. In the end, of course, the pseudo-experts can prosper in the market of “trash audiences” as easily as a fish in water.
But are these “trash audiences” really beyond hope—quite possibly including the parents and elders of serious experts and scholars—and should they even bear the blame for an environment in which swindlers flourish?
Admittedly, some viewers who appear “low-end” often have many stale bits of knowledge and stubborn prejudices. In the eyes of “high-end elites,” these stale notions and stubbornness are precisely the reason they are despised; in the eyes of Liu Hongbin and her ilk, they are precisely business opportunities waiting to be seized. But neither of these two groups regards such stale notions and stubbornness as “challenges” that must be addressed.
Truly creative new products always challenge, rather than cater to, the habits of the masses. For example, before the iPhone was produced, the public did not at all have a demand for smartphones. In people’s minds, a good phone was one with strong signal reception, long battery life, sturdiness, and durability, and so on. A product like the iPhone, which did not conform to mass demand, first had to challenge people’s habits and guide the public to appreciate mobile phones according to new standards.
Before WeChat became popular, who could have imagined that old men and old ladies who didn’t even know how to turn off a phone would happily scroll through Moments? Before Alipay became popular, who could have imagined that market women who may never even have played with a computer could learn mobile payments? We should not underestimate anyone’s ability to learn and adapt. The viewers attracted by Liu Hongbin’s performance may likewise change their standards of judgment at any time; it is just that the efforts and creativity of science popularizers are still not enough.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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