Why do emotional pain points create cultural hits?

This article analyzes the rise and fall of the Chinese film market in different periods using the three-part method of pain points, pleasure points, and itch points. It makes people re-examine the development of Chinese films and is recommended for everyone who cares about the film market.

The Book of Songs has a three-category classification system, which succinctly distinguishes the categories of Chinese culture, namely Feng, Ya, and Song. Feng is the popular culture from the folks, Ya is the elegant culture from the scholars, and Song is the ritual and music culture from the temple. These three cultures have been constantly blending to form the traditional Chinese culture.

There is also a three-category classification in product demand theory, namely pain points, pleasure points, and itch points , which can well explain the relationship between products and customer needs. Products that can solve pain points are often rigid-need products, products that can solve pleasure points are often luxury products that provide a sense of pleasure and identity, and products that can solve itch points are interesting, emotional products with a small but certain happiness style.

The pain points, pleasure points, and itch points of cultural works are also suitable for evaluating them.

Cultural works with pain points often hit people's existential anxiety and can produce adrenaline .

Cultural works that are exciting often hit the mark in terms of entertainment pleasure and can bring about dopamine .

Cultural works that have an itchy feel are often interesting and can produce serotonin .

As shown in the picture -

1. Pain Point Works

This summer's most popular movie, "All or Nothing," is a typical pain point movie.

It tells a story about online fraud in the form of a comprehensive guide, fully hitting the most worrying survival anxiety and fear of falling into the hearts of people today, and then through redemption-style rescue, it allows people to breathe a sigh of relief before leaving the cinema. This is a typical pain point story model. The result was a huge success, winning the box office championship for 15 consecutive days, and has entered the top 20 Chinese movie box office. The final box office forecast is 3.819 billion yuan.

In the past, such a work of real-life crime record + propaganda and education example would generally be in the middle of the box office, not too high. But now it has become the summer box office champion, plus the box office of "Gone Girl" which focuses on love crisis and marriage fraud, 3.5 billion, "In the Octagonal Cage" which focuses on the survival crisis of the bottom of society, 2.2 billion, "Fengshen 1" which is covered with a magical shell but actually focuses on patricide and power crisis, 2.3 billion, and "Chang'an 30,000 Miles" which describes the collapse of the Tang Dynasty due to the An-Shi Rebellion and the displacement of heroic poets such as Li Bai, 1.8 billion, breaking the box office record of Chinese animated feature films...

In short, realistic and cruel movies that express a sense of crisis, fear, and the need for survival and hit emotional pain points have far outstripped a number of old-fashioned Hollywood blockbusters at the box office this year.

This is also a cycle. The last time pain point movies were the mainstream was from the 1980s to the early 1990s.
For a long period of time at the beginning of reform and opening up, Chinese films were represented by scar and reflective films, such as "Furong Town", "Legend of Tianyun Mountain", "The Shepherd", "Middle-Aged Man", etc. Many people don't know about them now, but at that time they really attracted a lot of people and everyone was talking about them.

Going further, the fifth generation of directors emerged, adding a more profound sense of historical culture and symbolic symbols to the basis of scar films, such as "Yellow Earth", "Red Dye", "Farewell My Concubine", etc.

At that time, profundity, contemplation, focus on problems and facing reality were the elements of successful cultural works. It was an era when pain point culture led society.

At the same time, works that both satisfy and itch the audience began to appear, reflecting the new world and optimistic spirit brought about by the achievements of reform and opening up.

Let’s talk about some more exciting works.

The common feature of all exciting works is that they stimulate the physiological dopamine effect by expressing human entertainment needs to the extreme. They are often composed of big scenes, special effects, fierce battles, superheroes, handsome men and beautiful women, etc.

In the 1980s, a Hong Kong-made kung fu blockbuster called "Shaolin Temple" came out of nowhere and caused a huge sensation. Many people watched it again and again, some four or five times or more, because at that time when commercial entertainment films were still very scarce, "Shaolin Temple" was simply as wonderful and magnificent as a visitor from outer space.

The requirements for exciting works are very high. They need to constantly provide novel narratives, keep people excited and produce dopamine, and create the ultimate entertainment pleasure and emotional peak with high industrial standards.

Due to the limited hardware capabilities and insufficient budgets for mainland China's film production for a long time, until the end of the 20th century, the domestically produced big entertainment blockbusters seemed to be imitating others and were quite unsuccessful.

It was not until the film market revenue-sharing system was implemented that the ceiling of the film box office was broken and the potential was released, and truly domestic blockbusters came into being.

The release of "Hero" marks the arrival of the era of Chinese local blockbuster films. The film features a grand display of historical and natural landscapes, a large gathering of superstars, and a major upgrade in film and television special effects, creating a phenomenal sensation.

From then on, domestic blockbusters were like boarding a super highway. Often, dozens or even hundreds of films were produced and released in a year. After a few years of shooting one style, people got tired of it and switched to the next one, and then the next one...

The first wave was costume and martial arts blockbusters. After the peak lasted for four or five years, the audience gradually got tired of it.

The next wave is magic and fictional fantasy blockbusters. This wave lasted for a long time, but due to insufficient foundation and poor scripts, there were few high-quality works, and they were also the most criticized and disgusting by the audience.

The next wave is science fiction blockbusters, which include excellent works such as "The Wandering Earth", but also a large number of semi-finished products that were not well filmed.

The next wave is blockbusters with red and patriotic themes, from "Wolf Warrior 2" to "Eight Hundred", "Changjin Lake", "Watergate Bridge", etc.

By 2023, blockbuster movies have clearly entered a post-weak period in the Chinese film market. Moreover, the representative cases of failure are not mainly domestic films, but super products from the Hollywood industrial assembly line.

For example, "Avatar 2", "Mission Impossible 7", "The Meg 2", "Transformers: Rise of the Power Rangers" and other films released in China this year not only did not perform as well as in the past at the box office, but also had average reputation.

This is related to people's general aesthetic fatigue with Hollywood blockbusters, Hollywood's lack of ambition, its obsession with old IPs and sequels, and the fact that blockbuster movies are becoming less and less blockbuster, and the lack of attention to reality and the difficulty of empathy in these movies. It's like someone saying after watching Mission Impossible 7 that the only thing worth watching is Tom Cruise's personal jump.

This also makes domestic blockbusters that rely solely on excitement to sell themselves on thin ice, and they are very likely to fail. People even think that if a movie claims to have a star-studded cast (including popular stars), unprecedented special effects, and epic level, it is basically synonymous with a bad movie.

This has forced all new blockbusters to avoid spoilers and change their plots. The newly released "Investiture of the Gods 1" is a representative example. In fact, the box office success of this movie is mainly due to the dramatic story rather than the magical part. It is because this originally magical movie was filmed as a dramatic movie that it has maintained a good reputation and has not been overwhelmed by negative reviews, unlike movies like "The Bombing" which collapsed completely.

Moreover, no matter what, the ability to produce exciting blockbusters represents the highest level of a country's film industry and is very worthy of continued development, but it requires real plot masterpieces.

2. Itchy Point Works

As the name suggests, the itch point can tickle a soft spot in people's hearts, bringing tickling-like pleasure and touching feelings.

It often does not require exciting scenes or the cruel facing of reality. It only needs a unique perspective, creative expression and rich interest.

The 1990s to the early 2000s were the peak of Chinese itchy-point movies. The most representative ones were Stephen Chow's nonsensical comedy and Feng Xiaogang's sketch comedy. Both achieved huge success, forming a powerful subculture, and still have a huge influence today.

Both Stephen Chow's nonsensical comedy and Feng's sketch comedies fully embody the characteristics of being interesting without being too tiring, and it's good as long as they tickle the itch comfortably.

In fact, Wong Kar-wai's films are also typical itch points. Whether it is "Chungking Express", "Ashes of Time" or "In the Mood for Love", they do not rely on big scenes, but on mood and atmosphere to win.

Jay Chou's "Secret" is also a representative work of Itchy Point Movies. The ingenious conception and moving emotions make this movie impossible for Jay Chou himself to surpass until now.

As the itchy spot movies developed into the 21st century, with the further maturity of the Chinese film industry, Ning Hao's "Crazy Stone" appeared, which cleverly ridiculed social issues rather than being sad. With further development, there appeared Xu Zheng's "囧" series, the Mahua team's series of comedies, Chen Sicheng's "Tang Detective series", "The Accidental Detective series" and other exotic suspense films, Dapeng's inspirational comedy series, and so on.

I would also like to point out that new creators such as Ning Hao, Xu Zheng, Mahua team, Chen Sicheng, Dapeng, etc., compared with previous creators of the same type, are more like product managers . Product manager is not a derogatory term, but a reflection of the more sophisticated Chinese film production. Of course, among them, Ning Hao, Xu Zheng, and Chen Sicheng have more stable product capabilities, and their works generally maintain a standard, unlike Mahua movies, which have some excellent ones and many bad ones that are far below the standard.

I think China's new films have more stable and mature production capabilities when it comes to hitting the itch point, but they still lack some average ability and maturity when it comes to hitting the excitement point, which leads to a huge gap in the quality of the latter's works.

In a nutshell, itch-point works often express social issues in a less intense and more interesting way through dark, sarcastic, deconstructive, or sentimental means, which is what makes them different from pain-point works. In addition, small productions often bring great results, which is what makes them different from refreshing works.

3. Pain points return to the mainstream

I have already summarized it before. This year's film market has an obvious and large-scale leading phenomenon of domestic films. This is because they have captured people's emotional pain points. Any film that can face the cruelty of reality, has a good story, and has outstanding characters can achieve astonishing box office results that far exceed those of the past.

Of course, real pain points have achieved box office miracles many years ago, such as "Dying to Survive", but only this year has a cluster leading effect appeared. Now, only movies that stimulate people's emotional pain points can be a hit, and whether they are big productions or not does not matter much.

There are many reasons behind this. One reason is aesthetic fatigue, which makes it difficult to watch exciting movies. But the main reason is the background of the times. The anxiety about many real problems is like a Stonehenge pressing on people's hearts. People are worried about falling into different classes and various losses. These are people's personal sense of crisis. Therefore, it is difficult for everyone to go to the cinema to watch exciting movies to make themselves happy like in the past.

People's motivations for buying tickets to the cinema have changed: Why should I buy a ticket for the same cool movie as before? The pleasure of repetition is no longer pleasurable, it's not worth buying a ticket! I am willing to spend money on tickets for the things that can make me empathize with the most, and let me vent my inner tension and anxiety. Only negative times negative can make a positive, and only positive equals no positive.

There is also "The Incredibles". Originally, comedy could occupy an important position in the summer box office, but how can you make people feel enough empathy and joy when you set this family as Russians? This kind of onlookers can't even eat melons. It is far better to watch the difficulties encountered by Chinese tourists in Southeast Asia, which can be more empathetic, even if the latter is not a comedy.

This also led to differentiated results in movies: some movies that were originally just for fun and itch-inducing things turned into pain points because they happened to hit the vital points and achieved amazing box office; some fun movies saw a box office plummet because they were not fun at all; and there were even more itch-inducing movies that failed to scratch the itch because they were unrealistic.

Chinese contemporary films have gone through more than 40 years of development, and cultural blockbusters are constantly evolving. The classification of pain points, pleasure points, and itch points can clearly reflect the main thread of the development of people's hearts:

The first stage is mainly about pain points

(1978～1993)

｜

The second stage is mainly itch points

(1994～2003)

｜

The third stage of excitement

(2004～2022)

｜

Return to the current stage of pain points

(2023……)

In short, the pain points, pleasure points, and itch points reflect not only the changes in people’s hearts and social mentality, but also the maturity of the Chinese film industry.

When people have thoughts, the wind moves, the flags move, and cultural works explode.

Cultural hits can also give back to people's hearts, bringing comfort, happiness or healing.

Finally, let’s talk about the integration of pain points, pleasure points, and itch points——

For any cultural work, these points will be intertwined, not just one.

The greatest power of pain point works comes from the anxiety of facing reality and the need to vent long-suppressed needs; the greatest power of pleasure point works comes from the high level of industrialized production of cultural products; the greatest charm of itch point works comes from the creator's ingenuity and unique interest angle. These three are not incompatible, but more like three parallel lines, and a good work can accommodate multiple parallel lines.

Take "30,000 Miles from Chang'an" as an example. In fact, it is both a thrilling film and a painful film. The thrill comes from the exquisite and vast interpretation of Tang poetry, which is something that Chinese films have always lacked or not done thoroughly in the past, and "30,000 Miles from Chang'an" has fully done it in the form of animation; at the same time, the painful point comes from the fact that it describes the sudden collapse and decline of the prosperous Tang Dynasty, which the Chinese are most proud of, because the main story line of the movie is: the first half is the prosperous Tang Dynasty, and the Anshi Rebellion suddenly broke out in the second half. The prosperous atmosphere turned into broken walls and dilapidated beams, and the mountains and rivers were shattered. This has always been a pain in the hearts of the Chinese people.

Therefore, although the script of "Three Thousand Miles from Chang'an" is not well written and the story is really bumpy, the pain points and excitement points are well combined. It is precisely because the pain point of the collapse of the prosperous Tang Dynasty is the main line that the heroic excitement of poets such as Li Bai and Tang poems such as "Song of the Wine" are more touching.
The huge difference in the domestic and overseas box office of "Barbie" is also very interesting. The film earned 1.1 billion US dollars worldwide, but only more than 200 million in China. From the feedback, it is obvious that "Barbie" has achieved super success in the global market by hitting the pain point of the gender war between men and women, and it is not just an adaptation of a toy IP.

However, the film's influence in China is obviously weak because China regards it more as a derivative movie of a toy super IP, and the response it caused was more commercial and branded. As for the gender battle between men and women in the film, it was too gentle and did not stir up much waves.

Let's jump out of the movie and take Daolang's recently popular and controversial song "Rakshasa Haishi" as an example. Actually, I initially thought it was good because it was very interesting. I appreciated it as an itch point. If most people were like this, it would only be limited to the field of music lovers and a little bit of the reaction of the spectators. But judging from its huge social feedback, this song actually hit the pain point of society and catered to the long-suppressed social emotions.

Moreover, the lyrics of "Rakshasa Sea City" are obscure and can refer to anything, which provides an outlet for many people with completely different attitudes to vent their emotions. Any completely opposite social phenomenon or group of people may be the victim or the initiator. Similarly, people who hate this song can also be completely different people.

Also, whether it is a pain point, a pleasure point, or an itch point, the narrative method used to tell it is often more important than the story itself.

For example, compared with the previous "Dying to Survive", these realistic pain point movies are obviously more "straightforward", and they are more fast-paced, heart-wrenching, strong dialogues, highly topical scenes, etc. In terms of script quality, I don't think they are necessarily better than the previous classics, and they are even worse, but this is the reading feature of this era, which is short, flat and fast, and it must be direct and quickly connect one reversal after another. It's hard to say whether this method is classic enough, but at least it is much better than the empty and hollow traffic movies.

The most important feature that distinguishes pain point movies from pleasure point and itch point movies is that they draw attention to themselves, ordinary people, and society. It is not just that itch point works are close to life, but they also have a strong sense of immersion.

The reason why I say that now is the era of returning to pain point movies is because these movies are indeed meaningful to reality and can allow more people and even the whole society to discuss and pay attention to the social issues behind the pain points. This is really a kind of return, and it is very similar to the pain point movies of the 1980s. The "Furong Town", "The Shepherd", and "Middle-Aged Man" of that year have successively aroused great attention to related social issues and promoted the improvement and even resolution of the problems.

Simply put, it is from personal empathy to collective resonance, and then to social resonance.

When movies and songs have this ability, it means that the "product manager" ability of Chinese films is becoming more and more accurate and mature. As I said at the beginning, the classification of pain points, pleasure points, and itch points comes from product demand theory. A product created in accordance with product demand and human nature must be able to solve people's problems. Similarly, cultural works that truly have pain points, pleasure points, and itch points must also have this ability.

So when a creator is called a "product manager" and a movie is called an excellent product, I don't think it is a derogatory term, but a genuine compliment.

Of course, artistic creation is naturally spiritual and casual in nature, and not all cultural works can be considered products, which is also not good.

Finally, I made a distribution map of pain points, pleasure points and itch points in various movies for reference by those who like and need to create——

Chinese films can use a more personal and targeted approach to overwhelm Hollywood's one-size-fits-all routines.

Going further, when Chinese cultural works capture the pain points, pleasure points and itchiness points of people around the world, they can also become global cultural hits, such as Genshin Impact.

Author: Chen Gray

Source: WeChat public account "IP Fried Rice (ID: 1054402)"