Tokyo Shock is Alive and Well and Living in Flushing
So, by now everyone who is so inclined has exposed themselves to the latest Far Eastern genre import, the nerve-rending tale of supernatural terror that is Ju-On: The Grudge. Recapping: Ju-On is a punchy, episodic tale of terror flashing back and forward with giddy (and perhaps arbitrary) abandon, lurching from today to yesterday to tomorrow to track the rapid destruction of two living families by the undead fury of a roving mother-son/croaking-meowing/succubus-incubus thingy. Creepy crabwalking Kayoko and her bug-eyed little tyke Toshio steal the souls and possess the bodies of the still-living nuclear clans, reducing their victims to a Karloffian stagger and a Presleyan facial tick, in attempt to sate the enduring rage generated by their own murder at the hands of the patriarch of their family. Relentless, hysterical, and driven more by its series of abrasive windup-and-punchline scares than by anything like a linear narrative, the rising and expanding success of Ju-On is a matter of some curiosity. Is it a potent expression of a distinctly Japanese brand of righteous indignation whose raw emotional intensity generates a tableau of intuitive hallucinatory horrors, a feat that allows the film to transcend cultural borders and linear narrative structures? Or is it merely ninety minutes of desperate cinematic milking of Hideo Nakata’s powerful pendant works of supernatural horror in hopes of wringing out even a teaspoonful of the potency that demanded of Ringu and asan American remake apiece?
Well, whatever the nature of the beast, it seems to be serving 32-year old director Takashi Shimizu well. One Mr. Samuel Raimi has made Shimizu an offer he can’t refuse, commissioning the production of a Hollywood remake of the first of the Japanese director’s projected trilogy, even as he is still heavy with sequel. But with the blushing specter of the ostensible American fear of subtitles (um….Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, anyone?) hanging overhead, and a little pillow talk, Shimizu hopped in the sack with Ghost House Pictures and conceived again. Shimizu, blushing schoolboy that he is reputed to be, admitted to Sci Fi Wire, “These producers, including Sam Raimi, they really wanted me to do it again, because the taste I have has never been done in America as a horror movie, and they really wanted to introduce my taste to America. I thought that was nice, and I decided to do it."
Has he really been convinced that he’ll be taking America’s Japanese horror cherry? Methinks Takashi Shimizu is being a little faux-naïf. I sympathize with his apparent bewilderment at His Eminence Mr. Raimi’s request for a remake of Ju-On almost before the projected trilogy has finished gestating, but the suggestion of surprise in many of his comments vis-à-vis the capacity for Ju-On’s Japanese fear factor to scan well with American audiences seems a little absurd at this point. His coy murmuring about an altered ending for The Grudge is a bit suspect. Not only has the phenomenally successful Ringu remake beaten a smooth path for his tender young feet to tread, but the benevolent presence of the pre-natal American Dark Water hovers auspiciously on the January 2005 horizon, virtually walking Ju-On down the aisle. (Thanks a load, Jennifer Connelly. We worship you, et al) And of course, both of those originals are readily available at just about any old mom and pop rental outfit on any old American corner now. Moreover, even Sion Sono’s Suicide Club experienced sweeping festival success and remarkable breadth of distribution Stateside earlier this year despite its decidedly art house approach to a uniquely Japanese social scourge. It’s next to impossible that this evolving cultural climate has escaped Mr. Shimizu’s notice, and it would be stranger still if he were unaware of the eye-popping relationship (sorry, Everyone) between Ringu's now-classic promotional image of Sadako's demonic orb peering out from behind a curtain of matted hair, and The Grudge's promotional image of Kayoko's, um, demonic orb peering out from behind a curtain of matted hair. This use of the resonant Japanese image to pander to the future American audience, in combination with the queasy similarity between Ju-On’s central scare tactic and a certain recently exhumed, widely visible outtake from the first part of a currently expanding American horror franchise – that’s right, Reagan’s much-maligned spider walk from the “Version You’ve Never Seen” of The Exorcist. Now, I’d never have the gall to pretend that I’m the first or only to notice this. I bring it up by way of suggesting that Shimizu’s dewy-eyed babe in the woods reaction to Raimi’s courtship and the supposed American innocence of his particular horrific stylings is a pretty weird put-on, all things considered.
But maybe I’m being too quick to judge. Maybe a cultural exchange between two such alien nations will always feel like the very first time. Nervous comments made by Georgia peach Kadee Strickland suggest that maybe the problem of translation is not to be taken for granted. She told the aforementioned Wire, "I play a businesswoman who has lived in Japan, and her family's coming over. So I am sort of the seasoned, cultured girl over in Japan. She's a businesswoman gal, and it's just so funny, because I'd never said a lick of Japanese in my life before, and I'm not Southern in the picture, so that was also going to be fun, to have to speak Japanese and not have a Southern accent. There were all kinds of twists and turns in that job for me.”
So maybe I’m being too blasé about the imminent danger of delivering his intrinsically Japanese message to a Western audience. She could be right. If I hear Miss Strickland’s syrupy-sweet southern drawl gently warping what I’m sure will be her gaijin character’s otherwise flawless Japanese in the midst of this dialogue-heavy, intensely character-driven psychosocial opus, I might have a brain aneurism and die. Twists and turns abound. Good luck, Kadee. So perhaps I’ll recant and doff my cap to all the brave little thespians who are undertaking the formidable task of helping Americans understand what’s scary about being haunted from beyond the grave by an unspeakable soul-eating evil.
So what is this “taste that has never been done before” to which Shimizu might allude? Even cinematic progenitor Nakata seems to be repeating the same grim, condescending presumption about the translation process. “The American audience needs more jolts or stimulation, whereas the Asian audience can be a little more patient,” he said to MTV regarding the reconception of The Ring 2. Is anybody really satisfied with this excuse? After poring over page after page of vagaries about Japanese pacing and power of suggestion expressed by Raimi and Shimizu and their ilk, I found a much more helpful observation made by cameo superstar Ted Raimi regarding Japanese and American ghost storytelling:
“Everybody suffers in a Japanese horror film. In American horror films, in Halloween, for example, there's that morality system where P.J. Soles sleeps with her boyfriend and then Michael Myers comes and kills her. In this film, the innocent and the guilty suffer. There is no distinction.”
Ah, now that’s the ticket. It’s not that critique about Japanese pacing and coyness, which flagrantly ignores the country’s historic fascination with violence and biological decay in evidence at least as early as its relatively eager acceptance of blood-drenched Christian literature and iconography, and still apparent in a substantial body of internationally successful gore-soaked cinema (Tetsuo: The Iron Man, the bizarrely visceral Uzumaki, any of the most popular Miike selections…), but also overlooks the fact that Ju-On is, while bloodless, nothing but a series of jarring scare shots from beginning to end. The junior Raimi notices that neither Ringu or Dark Water or any of their ocean-crossing peers settle for moralizing about mortality. And THAT’S why they’re so exceptionally frightening to the primally puritanical American sensibility. Thanks, Ted. Loved you in Skinner. Truly.
So the question remains, will the Raimi-Shimizu lovechild adopt the piety of American slasher films in the translation process? We’ll just have to bite our nails until October 22 to find out.
Well, whatever the nature of the beast, it seems to be serving 32-year old director Takashi Shimizu well. One Mr. Samuel Raimi has made Shimizu an offer he can’t refuse, commissioning the production of a Hollywood remake of the first of the Japanese director’s projected trilogy, even as he is still heavy with sequel. But with the blushing specter of the ostensible American fear of subtitles (um….Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, anyone?) hanging overhead, and a little pillow talk, Shimizu hopped in the sack with Ghost House Pictures and conceived again. Shimizu, blushing schoolboy that he is reputed to be, admitted to Sci Fi Wire, “These producers, including Sam Raimi, they really wanted me to do it again, because the taste I have has never been done in America as a horror movie, and they really wanted to introduce my taste to America. I thought that was nice, and I decided to do it."
Has he really been convinced that he’ll be taking America’s Japanese horror cherry? Methinks Takashi Shimizu is being a little faux-naïf. I sympathize with his apparent bewilderment at His Eminence Mr. Raimi’s request for a remake of Ju-On almost before the projected trilogy has finished gestating, but the suggestion of surprise in many of his comments vis-à-vis the capacity for Ju-On’s Japanese fear factor to scan well with American audiences seems a little absurd at this point. His coy murmuring about an altered ending for The Grudge is a bit suspect. Not only has the phenomenally successful Ringu remake beaten a smooth path for his tender young feet to tread, but the benevolent presence of the pre-natal American Dark Water hovers auspiciously on the January 2005 horizon, virtually walking Ju-On down the aisle. (Thanks a load, Jennifer Connelly. We worship you, et al) And of course, both of those originals are readily available at just about any old mom and pop rental outfit on any old American corner now. Moreover, even Sion Sono’s Suicide Club experienced sweeping festival success and remarkable breadth of distribution Stateside earlier this year despite its decidedly art house approach to a uniquely Japanese social scourge. It’s next to impossible that this evolving cultural climate has escaped Mr. Shimizu’s notice, and it would be stranger still if he were unaware of the eye-popping relationship (sorry, Everyone) between Ringu's now-classic promotional image of Sadako's demonic orb peering out from behind a curtain of matted hair, and The Grudge's promotional image of Kayoko's, um, demonic orb peering out from behind a curtain of matted hair. This use of the resonant Japanese image to pander to the future American audience, in combination with the queasy similarity between Ju-On’s central scare tactic and a certain recently exhumed, widely visible outtake from the first part of a currently expanding American horror franchise – that’s right, Reagan’s much-maligned spider walk from the “Version You’ve Never Seen” of The Exorcist. Now, I’d never have the gall to pretend that I’m the first or only to notice this. I bring it up by way of suggesting that Shimizu’s dewy-eyed babe in the woods reaction to Raimi’s courtship and the supposed American innocence of his particular horrific stylings is a pretty weird put-on, all things considered.
But maybe I’m being too quick to judge. Maybe a cultural exchange between two such alien nations will always feel like the very first time. Nervous comments made by Georgia peach Kadee Strickland suggest that maybe the problem of translation is not to be taken for granted. She told the aforementioned Wire, "I play a businesswoman who has lived in Japan, and her family's coming over. So I am sort of the seasoned, cultured girl over in Japan. She's a businesswoman gal, and it's just so funny, because I'd never said a lick of Japanese in my life before, and I'm not Southern in the picture, so that was also going to be fun, to have to speak Japanese and not have a Southern accent. There were all kinds of twists and turns in that job for me.”
So maybe I’m being too blasé about the imminent danger of delivering his intrinsically Japanese message to a Western audience. She could be right. If I hear Miss Strickland’s syrupy-sweet southern drawl gently warping what I’m sure will be her gaijin character’s otherwise flawless Japanese in the midst of this dialogue-heavy, intensely character-driven psychosocial opus, I might have a brain aneurism and die. Twists and turns abound. Good luck, Kadee. So perhaps I’ll recant and doff my cap to all the brave little thespians who are undertaking the formidable task of helping Americans understand what’s scary about being haunted from beyond the grave by an unspeakable soul-eating evil.
So what is this “taste that has never been done before” to which Shimizu might allude? Even cinematic progenitor Nakata seems to be repeating the same grim, condescending presumption about the translation process. “The American audience needs more jolts or stimulation, whereas the Asian audience can be a little more patient,” he said to MTV regarding the reconception of The Ring 2. Is anybody really satisfied with this excuse? After poring over page after page of vagaries about Japanese pacing and power of suggestion expressed by Raimi and Shimizu and their ilk, I found a much more helpful observation made by cameo superstar Ted Raimi regarding Japanese and American ghost storytelling:
“Everybody suffers in a Japanese horror film. In American horror films, in Halloween, for example, there's that morality system where P.J. Soles sleeps with her boyfriend and then Michael Myers comes and kills her. In this film, the innocent and the guilty suffer. There is no distinction.”
Ah, now that’s the ticket. It’s not that critique about Japanese pacing and coyness, which flagrantly ignores the country’s historic fascination with violence and biological decay in evidence at least as early as its relatively eager acceptance of blood-drenched Christian literature and iconography, and still apparent in a substantial body of internationally successful gore-soaked cinema (Tetsuo: The Iron Man, the bizarrely visceral Uzumaki, any of the most popular Miike selections…), but also overlooks the fact that Ju-On is, while bloodless, nothing but a series of jarring scare shots from beginning to end. The junior Raimi notices that neither Ringu or Dark Water or any of their ocean-crossing peers settle for moralizing about mortality. And THAT’S why they’re so exceptionally frightening to the primally puritanical American sensibility. Thanks, Ted. Loved you in Skinner. Truly.
So the question remains, will the Raimi-Shimizu lovechild adopt the piety of American slasher films in the translation process? We’ll just have to bite our nails until October 22 to find out.
posted by claire donner at Tuesday, September 07, 2004
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