sistermagpie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sistermagpie) wrote2004-02-14 12:34 am
sistermagpie) wrote2004-02-14 12:34 am
An interesting evening
Tonight I went to see Ju-On. I had tried to get it on video once but it wasn't yet available for US VCRs. Anyway, I very much enjoyed myself. There's a shower scene where...well, you know how Janet Leigh gets stabbed to death in her shower? I'd almost rather have that happen then the little thing that happens to this woman. And the scene with the cats. Yes.
I haven't seen enough Asian horror movies. Really just Ringu, Jian Gui and this. I really love the way Ringu and Ju-On can make little things so disturbing. In Ju-On the ghosts leave torn paper around and knock things over. But because this is a Japanese house it's incredible scary. If something's out of place there must be a demon in the house. Even when the characters sleep it's incredibly neat, with the sheets pulled straight across them as they lay on their back. That's why in Ringu when the heroine wakes up and looks at the fouton next to her and it looks like it's empty with the blankets just scrunched up on it it's scary--because the sheets should NEVER be messed up in this movie!!!
Anyway, I feel in watching J-Horror that there's this whole cultural language I'm not getting but makes it enjoyable anyone. I'm not talking National Geographic here, like such-and-such is supposed to be a history or anthropology lesson. I just mean...well, there are certain things that come up in Ringu and Ju-On: the little boy, the slithering woman, the messy moments, rage, and these things seem to mean something important. This is one reason I so prefer Ringu to The Ring. In the original I feel like I know what Sadako is on some level. Like she's chaos, like the eruption her mother predicted. She's everything not spoken of in a strict society. Not only will she pop in uninvited, but she won't take off her shoes and put on those little slippers before she comes to get you!! In The Ring it's all over the place, imo. She doesn't really mean anything and her story makes no sense--she's obviously an Evil Creepy Kid so why was she adopted and then shunned? And why the barn? Feh. I just didn't like it.
Incidentally, there was one wonderful moment in Jian Gui when someone is hiding from something scary and she pushes all this stuff in front of the door to barricade it. And then--oh no! She forgot she was in Japan! The doors open sideways! (Okay, not all the doors, but still it's funny.)
I found myself again comparing these ghost movies to American ones like The Others and The Innocents and wondering about whether we have different associations with ghosts. There's a lot we have in common, but I wonder if there's some general associations that differ from one country to another.
This led me to remembering the first Japanese movies I used to watch which were, of course, the monster movies. People associate them with athe atomic age but it fascinates me how different the Japanese monster movies are from all the American movies about monsters created by atomic testing. The American movies pretty much all come down to the same line: "They tampered in God's domain." What's cool about the Japanese monsters is that while they might be destroying Tokyo on their first visit, they often show up to fight against an invading monster in the sequel. And they often like kids. One of my favorites has always been Gamera Vs. Monster X, where the two boys have to drive a yellow submarine inside Gamera to save him so he can fight the bad guy. Years later I found myself thinking about Gamera when I was watching Digimon (I did a book for them so I was watching a lot of it at once.)
Seeing those kids with their monsters I thought there just had to be some cultural understanding about kids and monsters, because the US just can't write the kind of human/monster relationships that seem such a staple in Japan. Pokemon uses it too. In fact, there's a great Dexter's Lab where Dexter goes to Japan and he is interested in fighting monsters like Digimon. Unfortunately he accidentally awakens a giant Godzilla-type monster from a volcano where he was "trapped by the great scientists of the 60's." It was a great acknowledgement of the great ancestors of today's monsters! I wish I had some understanding where I could sort of explain where this story comes from or something. Like if we were talking about the US atomic monster movies we could talk about that whole American Titanic-ish mentality.
After the movie I helped out at this cocktail party/screening of Greendale. Neil Young is the cutest man. He's actually a large hobbit, I think. He had even "put on his head a tall shapeless felt bag, which he called a hat." Just like Sam wore when they left the Shire. When he came in his friends were heading towards the theater and he just strolled over to us at the table instead to say hi. Then when he was leaving he came and smiled good-bye again. He put his beer down on the table and slid it over to me.
Then he gave me a thumb. The thumb-up. It was just the cutest thing I've ever seen. Neil Young, with the bag and the grin and the thumb. I gave him a thumb back. And I kept the bottle, for some reason. It just seemed sad to leave it there after the thumb.
I haven't seen enough Asian horror movies. Really just Ringu, Jian Gui and this. I really love the way Ringu and Ju-On can make little things so disturbing. In Ju-On the ghosts leave torn paper around and knock things over. But because this is a Japanese house it's incredible scary. If something's out of place there must be a demon in the house. Even when the characters sleep it's incredibly neat, with the sheets pulled straight across them as they lay on their back. That's why in Ringu when the heroine wakes up and looks at the fouton next to her and it looks like it's empty with the blankets just scrunched up on it it's scary--because the sheets should NEVER be messed up in this movie!!!
Anyway, I feel in watching J-Horror that there's this whole cultural language I'm not getting but makes it enjoyable anyone. I'm not talking National Geographic here, like such-and-such is supposed to be a history or anthropology lesson. I just mean...well, there are certain things that come up in Ringu and Ju-On: the little boy, the slithering woman, the messy moments, rage, and these things seem to mean something important. This is one reason I so prefer Ringu to The Ring. In the original I feel like I know what Sadako is on some level. Like she's chaos, like the eruption her mother predicted. She's everything not spoken of in a strict society. Not only will she pop in uninvited, but she won't take off her shoes and put on those little slippers before she comes to get you!! In The Ring it's all over the place, imo. She doesn't really mean anything and her story makes no sense--she's obviously an Evil Creepy Kid so why was she adopted and then shunned? And why the barn? Feh. I just didn't like it.
Incidentally, there was one wonderful moment in Jian Gui when someone is hiding from something scary and she pushes all this stuff in front of the door to barricade it. And then--oh no! She forgot she was in Japan! The doors open sideways! (Okay, not all the doors, but still it's funny.)
I found myself again comparing these ghost movies to American ones like The Others and The Innocents and wondering about whether we have different associations with ghosts. There's a lot we have in common, but I wonder if there's some general associations that differ from one country to another.
This led me to remembering the first Japanese movies I used to watch which were, of course, the monster movies. People associate them with athe atomic age but it fascinates me how different the Japanese monster movies are from all the American movies about monsters created by atomic testing. The American movies pretty much all come down to the same line: "They tampered in God's domain." What's cool about the Japanese monsters is that while they might be destroying Tokyo on their first visit, they often show up to fight against an invading monster in the sequel. And they often like kids. One of my favorites has always been Gamera Vs. Monster X, where the two boys have to drive a yellow submarine inside Gamera to save him so he can fight the bad guy. Years later I found myself thinking about Gamera when I was watching Digimon (I did a book for them so I was watching a lot of it at once.)
Seeing those kids with their monsters I thought there just had to be some cultural understanding about kids and monsters, because the US just can't write the kind of human/monster relationships that seem such a staple in Japan. Pokemon uses it too. In fact, there's a great Dexter's Lab where Dexter goes to Japan and he is interested in fighting monsters like Digimon. Unfortunately he accidentally awakens a giant Godzilla-type monster from a volcano where he was "trapped by the great scientists of the 60's." It was a great acknowledgement of the great ancestors of today's monsters! I wish I had some understanding where I could sort of explain where this story comes from or something. Like if we were talking about the US atomic monster movies we could talk about that whole American Titanic-ish mentality.
After the movie I helped out at this cocktail party/screening of Greendale. Neil Young is the cutest man. He's actually a large hobbit, I think. He had even "put on his head a tall shapeless felt bag, which he called a hat." Just like Sam wore when they left the Shire. When he came in his friends were heading towards the theater and he just strolled over to us at the table instead to say hi. Then when he was leaving he came and smiled good-bye again. He put his beer down on the table and slid it over to me.
Then he gave me a thumb. The thumb-up. It was just the cutest thing I've ever seen. Neil Young, with the bag and the grin and the thumb. I gave him a thumb back. And I kept the bottle, for some reason. It just seemed sad to leave it there after the thumb.
babble!
Here are two nice articles I found in the course of my researching... they're great overviews of the Japanese supernatural scene.
http://www.asianart.com/articles/rubin/
http://www.mangajin.com/mangajin/samplemj/ghosts/ghosts.htm
Hope that helps ^_^ That Buddhist/Shinto thing going is in there too.
I can't really speak to the Japanese monster phenomenon, specifically, but I'll take a shot. The giant monster stuff could come directly from the sentiment following the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Language of rebuilding. "We can build something out of war, and it might be positive." The futility / sorrow / need for war is a recurring theme. The classic giant mecha shows are on that too. And Gamera ruled :D
Ooh, found a link: http://www.japan-101.com/culture/godzilla_japanese_movie_monster.htm
Monsters as pets ... there's a cute little problem in Digimon in that the kids have to hide these monsters. Most of the urban kids would be living in apartments, and I think it's only been recently with more childless couples that those rules have loosened regarding pets. Could be wrong, though.
In the earliest Digimon seasons, there's a sense that these are familiars, in way... reflections of a self. The season after that (Tamers) the show was hinting at a parallel world metaphor, and directly dealing with "are these fighting machines? pets? friends? how do we treat other living beings?" And by last season they threw out the metaphor and made the kids become the digimon... take on the spirit directly. Mascot/spirit animal, I guess.
Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! are a bit different in that they are, after all, trying to sell you something. (Digimon too, but after a while the creative weight shifted to the show production.) That means more monsters, a greater variety of creatures. More about the power-ups and the characters than "gee, should an eleven year old be wandering the countryside battling for monsters?" Nice entertainment, then you leave the TV and trade cards / play video games with all your friends. Even then there's still a relationship between a certain monster/pet, ranging from intimate (Pikachu) to ... well, like a treasured sword (the dragons in Yu-Gi-Oh!).
Interestingly enough, there is actually a Digimon episode where the metaphysics (for those seasons, anyway) is explained, in that people traditionally believed that inanimate objects could be possessed. Giving life (spirit) to the non-living. And Digimon was just data that got imbued, in the same way 100-year-old items would be imbued. Digimon's great for mixing SF themes of artificial intelligence with some very old Japanese ideas. And having real kids in.
And why does Tokyo always get destroyed? (Not to mention the climactic Tokyo Tower scene, a cliche which even happens away from Earth.) It struck me when I was reading up on Samurai Troopers, regarding Tokyo scenes with empty streets: it said that all these scenes would be really eerie because there is always a crowd in those areas. It's like New York emptied of people. Space is at such a premium, there's something subversive and thrilling about a monster tearing down all these high rises. Also why golf is so huge in Japan... the open air is a luxury. It's amazing how much that is Japanese comes out from that economy of space.
Go Dexter's Lab! :D The Cartoon Network as a producer and distributor is amazingly respectful of Japanese anime; there was also a Powerpuff Girls episode that also had a giant monster, and giant mecha, and destroyed Townsville. (Unfortunately, the old-school Warner Bros cadre are not so informed; there are productions which take all the cultural Japanese stuff and misuse them. Ick.)
Anyway, I'm just another anime fan, so I can't speak with a lot of authority *g* That sounds like a fun evening! One day I'll actually catch up and see all this stuff ^^;;;
Re: babble!
I can't really count myself an expert on Digimon--I only watched part of whatever season my book was from, because it was a novelization of two episodes. I immediately fell in love with the theme song and sang it incessently.:-)
That's really interesting about the whole "something good coming out of war" thing. I mean, the atom bomb connection seems obviously but there's got to be a complex reaction to it. It's kind of interesting that if the Japanese view is that this bomb creates a monster that can then fight for you, the US movie seems to always turn on scientists creating something that then turns on *them.* Japan actually had to live through a bombing, America's living with being the ones that actually did it, I guess. The Tokyo/New York connection is definitely a good one too--cities where you live as in a beehive and you have to find your personal space inside your head. That's something a lot of people just don't think about a lot. Like in a movie about either city, if the subway is shown to be knocked out or the traffic messed up I immediately think about how awful it's going to be for everyone to get home from work!
I'm so glad to hear that about Cartoon Network too--I love them. I did several Dexter Books which are among my favorite books I ever did.:-) Unfortunately Scholastic cancelled the series before the last two were published, and the last one was my favorite. Anyway, I loved the show and got into Samurai Jack too. My partner and I seemed to be a much better fit with Cartoon Network than Nickelodeon. We just didn't seem to be on the same wavelength as that channel whenever we tried to do books for their shows. CN seemed to really like us, though.
I keep wanting to learn about anime, since I know nothing about it, but it's hard to know where to start. I recently bought a copy of "Banana Fish" because I saw that referenced somewhere. Actually, it was a book with a big flow chart of questions to ask that was supposed to tell you what kind of anime you would like and Banana Fish was one of the ones listed under my type, plus I'd seen it before. Now I just have to get around to reading it...
anime
I think you really really must begin with Miyazaki. Anything by him. Disney for once is doing an okay job by him, and they include the subtitled versions. Spirited Away, Totoro, Princess Mononoke, etc. Miyazaki is a genius and an artist and a man of great heart... it's wonderful how it comes through in his films.
no subject
You bet there are. I was going to send you a link, but I see that someone already beat me to the very best one I've ever found. I'll just quote from it and say: "The Japanese ghost is a thing of summer. [...] The classic type are spawned from steamy weather--squeezed out, as if in some fetid moment, from other things."
Kabuki is a likely source for any creepies you see in movies. They also like to steal things from Buddhism, but I haven't seen that being used in a horror context personally. (Yuu Yuu Hakusho is a prime example of Japanese entertainment stealing ideas from the Buddhist underworld, but most of the demonic things are actually sort of funny.)
Re:
Am now off to read that article!