Exploring Mainland School Youth Theme TV Series

With the appearance of school youth TV series in Mainland China in the late eighties of the twentieth century, a large number of such TV dramas have experienced a booming development. TV series, such as the "Sixteen-year-old Flower Season", "Campus Pioneers", and "Don't Cry Seventeen-year-old", have not only drawn popularity among the teen audience, but also caught the attention from educators. These TV series have a crucial impact on teenagers' psychological and physical maturation. They reflect, express, and emulate the reality of young people through the contents of the dramas, so they are of great referential value in real life. However, school youth TV series from this period of time did not establish an unshakable role in the market. The reasons are two folds:on the one hand, as a result of the boosting economy, many TV series addressing other topics are produced to cater viewers' needs, which leads to the shrinkage in market share of school youth dramas. On the other hand, as people start to live a richer and more colorful life, old youth dramas cannot meet the growing cultural needs of teenagers and cannot reflect teens' lives accurately any more. Under this situation, some new youth school TV series, represented by the "Eighteen-year-olds' Sky", have gained popularity in the market. However, these new series lose their focus on, and even deviate from teenagers' real life. Therefore, the problem of "what kind of school youth drama is needed in the movie and TV cultural market" becomes a major concern for researchers and the mainstream society. The return of school youth dramas that cater to contemporary teen audience's material and cultural needs is much needed in the market. In this thesis, in order to solve this important problem, that is, to look for the type of school youth drama that suits the market, the author will analyze the artistic features and techniques of expressions in the classic youth TV series, and compare the results to the current youth TV series. In addition, the author will discuss the teenagers' psychological maturation and the role of teachers in these school youth TV dramas, which is of positive and practical significance.