Chapter 107 Dusk of the world

In the 1988 film "The Price of Madness" directed by Zhou Xiaowen, I saw an all-too-familiar thing that only belonged to the 1980s: popular literature magazines. It emerged in the early 1980s. It used to be a tabloid sold to passengers on trains. It was originally called "legal literature" because it was mostly cases, and sometimes the words "internal reference" were added.In the 1980s, it sold for two yuan. Even now, it is an astonishingly high price for a newspaper. But at that time, there were few reading materials. It was a novel, and the sales volume was more than 700,000 to 800,000 copies. Such a solid read. In 1983, when we returned to the mainland from Xinjiang, everyone in the carriage had a copy of this newspaper along the way.The posture of reading the newspaper is exactly the same, holding it high, blocking the front, with sensational headlines, such as "The People Around Jiang Qing", "The Female Corpse in the Fishing Net" and so on.In the entire train carriage, only a piece of white newspaper can be seen.

Now that it has such a mass base, it matures quickly, and it almost thrives on the wind. The number of cases gradually decreases, and detective novels and mystery novels begin to appear.Then there were martial arts romances, stories of the Republic of China, folklore, horror novels, mystery novels, and memoirs of educated youths. Even the special romance novels that are now regarded as newly discovered were nothing but commonplace at that time.At this time, its name was also changed, called "Popular Literature".The newspaper couldn't fit, so I made a magazine based on the style of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng's novels at that time. It has 16 pages and about 200 pages. Beautiful women with full breasts and wretched villains with bluish faces. The titles are written in crude calligraphy. This style is unified throughout the country and is easily recognizable. The price is also unified across the country. Two yuan and fifty cents, which may vary, also meet this standard Prices fluctuate up and down.

In "The Price of Madness", the girl Lan Lan is raped, and a popular literature magazine is left on the car abandoned by the gangster to explain how he learns to be bad.Wu Yujuan's older sister, Qingqing, went crazy when she saw the magazine left at the scene—her boyfriend owns a bookstore facing the street, which sells this kind of magazine.She ran to her boyfriend's bookstore, tore and tore, and swept all the books on the floor.Later, Sun Dacheng, the gangster played by Chang Rong, was recognized at the door of the bookstore—he couldn't hold back anymore and went to buy that kind of magazine.This movie starts with a naked mirror, but uses an implicit criticism as the subline of the whole play, and the attitude is very interesting.

But criticism cannot last long.This kind of magazine has not been able to continue rampantly, and has not been able to enter the next decade smoothly.Only the 1980s could accommodate it and the ephemeral secular culture.Acheng said in the article that the Chinese pay the most attention to secular life, "Chinese culture is basically secular culture", but this secular life was later destroyed, and the secular culture and secular space of the Chinese people were also swept away.The so-called modern country is just a "perfect world" with high control, solemn scenery, clear water and no fish.Popular literature magazines are obviously not tolerated in this "perfect world". Like secular culture, they can only be revived briefly in the 1980s.

It is always the most confused when it is brightest, and it is also the most desolate when it is most prosperous.The 1980s, the revival of the secular world, was also the twilight of the secular world.It probably knows it itself, so there is always a kind of madness and despair that the end is approaching.I often search for this kind of magazine at second-hand book stalls, and it costs one yuan a piece. When I buy it, I think it is dirty, so I have to wear latex gloves to read it, as if I am committing a crime, which is just right for the tense and rich atmosphere of the 1980s.