This episode is also on Bilibili too.
Hi everyone, I’m Zhichao Wei. I just published a new book, 24 Frames of Psychological Codes: Psychology in Film. From now on, I’ll occasionally make videos on this channel, taking out choice bits from the book and sharing them with you. Actually, some of the videos I’ve posted here before were also drawn from this book, such as Zhang Wuji’s Shameful Fetish.
In today’s video, I’ll first give you a rough idea of what this book is about.
24 Frames of Psychological Codes is for all the movie fans who love watching and talking about films, as well as for readers with an interest in psychology. In it, I use psychological perspectives and ideas to interpret film plots, directors and actors, and the psychology of audiences watching movies. I also talk about how psychology has influenced the development of film technology.
For example, the first part examines the psychology of the people who make films: directors, screenwriters, and actors. I started by looking at some great directors: Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai, Hayao Miyazaki, Chen Kaige, Quentin Tarantino, and David Lynch. In fact, every one of them has spent a lifetime making the same film. They seem to keep expressing the same secret buried deep inside them, the same knot they can never untie. Wong Kar-wai’s films are all about pursuing married women and never getting them; all the protagonists in Ang Lee’s films are out of step with the world because they have a secret in their hearts; the protagonists in Chen Kaige’s films are almost always wounded boys; and all of Hayao Miyazaki’s protagonists are holding on to something alone, surrounded by noise and commotion. So what exactly is going on in these directors’ heads? What is it inside them that they can never resolve in a lifetime? I do a lot of analysis and exploration in the book. I also write about actors’ psychology. Why are comedy masters like Stephen Chow, Charlie Chaplin, and Jim Carrey all a little melancholy? Why do actors sometimes turn make-believe into reality and get so lost in a role that they can’t pull themselves out? What actually changes in an actor’s brain when they enter a role?
One section of the book analyzes the psychology of these filmmakers, but a large part also dives into film plots, discussing the psychological codes hidden in the classic scenes of many classic movies. For example, in The Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, why does Zhang Wuji love Zhao Min most, rather than the other three girls? What does this say about Zhang Wuji’s view of desire? In Harry Potter, what detail has everyone overlooked in the classic scene where Harry’s mother sacrifices herself? What does that reveal about the audience’s unconscious? And is La La Land merely a romantic musical? Actually, it has a hidden theme: Flow, a psychological state that psychologists find fascinating. Why, in A Chinese Ghost Story, does the tree demon Granny only eat young men? What is she really eating? The book draws on quite a bit of psychology and takes quite a few flights of fancy. Some serious, some decidedly not—I think this may be the part readers have the most fun with.
The book also covers topics related to various cinematic premises. For example, can the dream-control techniques in Inception actually be achieved in real life? I worked out a set of lucid-dreaming techniques from Inception’s premise that you can genuinely practice in reality. And why do zombies in horror films make us both love and fear them? The book also, of course, talks about hypnosis, a crowd-pleaser: in movies, hypnosis controls people in no time, but is real-life hypnosis really that powerful?
The book also explores how movies affect audiences psychologically—for example, can watching films make us smarter? Can movies improve our mental health? What kinds of psychological feelings do films with surreal subject matter evoke?
The final section discusses film technology. Why are there no smell movies? Why do images that are too realistic actually make a film lose its flavor? And how might brain-science technology change the way films are shot?
I discuss all these questions in 24 Frames of Psychological Codes with one foot in wild speculation and the other in serious sources. I hope these discussions give readers some fresh and interesting ways to think about film and psychology. I also hope this book lets me share with readers—and with all my fellow movie fans—the pleasure and emotion that films bring us.
If you’re interested in film or psychology, click the link directly below the screen or the one in the description to learn more about 24 Frames of Psychological Codes. I’ll also make some videos expanding on the book’s more entertaining details. I’m Zhichao Wei. Thanks for listening to me shamelessly hype my own book, and thank you for your understanding and support. See you next time.
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