Or Occasionally Inevitable: How To Become A Myth Harem Drama

Since2010, TV plays with the theme on Chinese emperors’harem have given rise to a new power on TV screen. Particularly,"Heart Lock Jade Palace", a very successful harem drama, represents many the same genre TV series, which bring about market prosperity of the whole harem dramas. However, behind the flourish, it leaves many problems. Homogeneity of competition not only breaks the room of development for such kind of dramas but overdrafts viewers’word-of-mouth. Comments on biased value orientation in some emperor’s harem dramas and poorly-made content appear again and again in newspapers. SARFT (The State Administration of Radio Film and Television) ordered to decrease broadcast of harem dramas in satellite channels’prime time in2012. While facing with this unfavorable situation, the TV series "Legend of Concubine Zhen Huan", which was broadcasted in March2012in AHTV and Dragon TV, has gotten a double win both in market effect and in reputation from viewers, becoming almost the best one for harem dramas and spreading its influence oversea till now.From the perspective of Mass Communication, the paper does systematical studies on harem dramas. Basing on the point of media criticism, the paper touches the false boom of harem series’ fad. Taking the "Legend of Concubine Zhen Huan" as a case, this paper analyzes in depth the drama’s production practice of text and interpretation of viewers. Specifically, the paper studies how this drama’s text produced in four dimensions:narrative structure, political ideology, production pattern, communication channels. Applying the perspective of "uses and gratification", this study also analyzes how audiences appreciate the drama. The paper states that although "Legend of Concubine Zhen Huan" shows struggles in palace, the TV series established its unique position through the great quality and artistic conception. The success indicates even in such blundering and good-and bad mixing era "quality ","innovation" and "closeness" are still the most three important factors to win. Further, communicational practice of "Legend of Concubine Zhen Huan" demonstrates the significant meaning of respecting propagation law, bettering communication model, and improving propagation strategy. Meanwhile, it reveals that producer of TV texts should focus on audiences, have creative sense, and stick to content-is-king.