• Complain

Valerie Wee - Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes

Here you can read online Valerie Wee - Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2013, publisher: Routledge, genre: Romance novel. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Valerie Wee Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes
  • Book:
    Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Routledge
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2013
  • Rating:
    5 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 100
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

The Ring (2002)Hollywoods remake of the Japanese cult success Ringu (1998)marked the beginning of a significant trend in the late 1990s and early 2000s of American adaptations of Asian horror films. This book explores this complex process of adaptation, paying particular attention to the various transformations that occur when texts cross cultural boundaries. Through close readings of a range of Japanese horror films and their Hollywood remakes, this study addresses the social, cultural, aesthetic and generic features of each national cinemas approach to and representation of horror, within the subgenre of the ghost story, tracing convergences and divergences in the films narrative trajectories, aesthetic style, thematic focus and ideological content. In comparing contemporary Japanese horror films with their American adaptations, this book advances existing studies of both the Japanese and American cinematic traditions, by:

  • illustrating the ways in which each tradition responds to developments in its social, cultural and ideological milieu; and,
  • examining Japanese horror films and their American remakes through a lens that highlights cross-cultural exchange and bilateral influence.

The book will be of interest to scholars of film, media, and cultural studies.

Valerie Wee: author's other books


Who wrote Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Upon its release in 1998, the Japanese horror film Ringu (Hideo Nakata) quickly attained cult status in the East, subsequently inspiring an American adaptation, The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002). This sparked a trend in which Hollywood began remaking Japanese and Asian horror films. Following The Ring s box-office success, other Japanese horror films, including Ju-On (Takashi Shimizu, 2002), Ringu director Hideo Nakatas Honogurai mizu no soko kara (2001, henceforth Honogurai mizu ), Kiyoshi Kurosawas Kairo (2001), and Chakushin ari (Takashi Miike, 2003), were remade by Hollywood as The Grudge (Takashi Shimizu, 2004), Dark Water (Walter Salles, 2005), Pulse (Jim Sonzero, 2005), and One Missed Call (Eric Valette, 2008), respectively. This phenomenon offers an opportunity to engage in comparative examinations that could provide rich insights into how differing cultural and ideological anxieties find expression in a range of narrative and representational revisions undertaken during the remaking process, even as it remains inevitable that each cultures products engage in an intricate cycle of mutual interaction and cross-cultural influence.

This book explores the complex exercise of textual transformation involved in translating films from one distinct culture to another, offering an in-depth investigation into the representations and conceptions of horror specific to Japan and Hollywood, while also acknowledging those anxieties and fears that transcend cultures and are commonly shared. Japanese Horror Films and Their American Remakes proposes that while the films mentioned above share numerous narrative and thematic similarities, there remain significant divergences in each versions treatment, execution, depiction, and resolution of key textual elements, differences that can be traced to distinct historical narrative and aesthetic conventions, and specific contemporary ideologies and attitudes.

This book is particularly interested in how contemporary Japanese horror film expresses distinctive values and ideologies, and how these points of view are changed and, in some cases, rejected, during the process of adapting the text for a different culture and a different audience. Thus, one of this books key objectives is to delineate the multifaceted ways in which textual elements are revised, with an aim to highlighting both what is gained and lost in the process. By comparing the Japanese perspective expressed in Ringu , Honogurai mizu , Ju-On , Kairo , and Chakushin ari to their American counterparts, The Ring , Dark Water , The Grudge , Pulse , and One Missed Call , this study highlights how contemporary constructions and indices of horror and the supernatural are shaped by and continue to uphold potentially unique worldviews, while also acknowledging the ways in which these national cinemas have influenced each other.

The assumption that different cultural texts reflect specific cultural beliefs, aesthetic practices, and value systems is a familiar one. In film, there is an established tradition of comparing different national cinemas with an eye to understanding the particular traditions that have helped shape that cultures cinematic narratives, styles, and beliefs. The view that Japanese and American cinema exist as separate and unique forms of creative and aesthetic expression reflecting distinct cultural perspectives is commonly expressed in several classic studies of Japanese popular culture and cinema. Ruth Benedicts The Chrysanthemum and the Sword and Joseph Anderson and Donald Richies seminal text on Japanese cinema, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry , both assume that Japanese cinema and popular culture exist as an expression of an idiosyncratic and identifiable national character and identity. Similar views of Japanese cinema as a unique alternative to Western and Hollywood cinema continue to surface in other English-language studies of Japanese film/popular culture. Donald Richie, Nol Burch, Joan Mellen, and more recently, Cynthia Contreras, Kathe Geist, Susan Napier ( Anime ), and Takashi Murakami (Earth; Superflat) have all emphasized the distinct and unique nature of Japanese culture and its aesthetics in their analyses of Japanese cinema, foregrounding the enduring influence of Japanese traditions and stylistic practices on its modern popular culture. Perceptions of Japanese cinema as narratively obscure, featuring inscrutable characters, and embracing culturally distinct aesthetic practices accessible only to those familiar and steeped in Japanese culture encourage the notion that it is characteristically unique and distinct. These studies reflect what Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto identifies as a position of Japanese cinema [that] maintained its territoriality through a double process of inclusion and exclusion (8).

Whereas these scholars highlight significant distinctions that set Japanese film and culture apart from others, other scholars have pointed out the danger of reinforcing a cultural essentialism that fails to adequately value the complex dynamics of cultural flows and influences that are also a part of cultural evolution. This is a point that David Bordwell argues, noting that a historical examination of the Japanese cinema must confront the fact that it is not wholly other, not a blank, drastic alternative (Dream 46). Darrell William Davis, William O. Gardner, Douglas McGray, and Jay McRoy represent the branch of Japanese film scholars and cultural commentators that has heeded Bordwells call. These individuals acknowledge the distinct qualities of Japanese culture while also noting Japans ability to adopt, hybridize, and incorporate external cultural influences, often commenting on the cross-cultural interactions that shape and characterize Japanese popular culture. As McGray asserts, Japan was fusing elements of other national cultures into an almost-coherent whole as early as the fifth century (48). These scholars and commentators, therefore, emphasize the porosity of Japanese culture in general, and Japanese film in particular, highlighting the assertion that Japanese cinema continues to be shaped by productive negotiations with other film cultures since its earliest origins.

Discussions of Hollywoods historical development often acknowledge the industrys great willingness to absorb and adapt influences from other national cinemas. As early as the silent film era, Hollywood welcomed European filmmakers and embraced their artistic contributions. German Expressionist filmmakers including Fritz Lang and Karl Freund joined Hollywood studios and brought with them their distinctive cinematic and stylistic practices, even as they absorbed Hollywoods preferred narrative and stylistic conventions into their filmmaking activities. And just as these Expressionist filmmakers working in Hollywood in the late 1920s and early 1930s helped launch the Hollywood horror genre, translating the Expressionist style into a visual tradition that would come to represent Hollywoods notions of cinematic terror and the monstrous, almost a century later, Hollywoods interest in Japanese horror showcases Hollywoods ongoing commitment to pursue contributions from non-Hollywood sources. Notably, Hideo Nakata and Takashi Shimizu were both hired by Hollywood studios to helm American horror films based on their successful Japanese versions.

Thus, despite holding the view that any national cinema will inevitably reveal unique and distinct expressions of national culture and identity, it also remains true that any national cinema is inevitably shaped by cross-cultural exchange. In fact, despite the apparent differences that distinguish American and Japanese (popular) culture in general, and Hollywood and Japanese cinematic forms and traditions in particular, there remains an undeniable degree of interaction and exchange between the two nations and industries. The Japanese and American horror films at the heart of this study stand as valuable examples of this tension between cultural specificity and cross-cultural influence. Acknowledging and investigating these complex developments involves pointing out the key qualities within each film that reflect a culturally specific perspective, working off the assumption that the distinct ideologies, messages, and aesthetics encompassed in contemporary Japanese and American horror films reveal complex attempts at expressing and negotiating historically specific sociocultural and political anxieties. At the same time, this study cannot legitimately proceed without recognizing the multiple ways in which these texts also reflect and reveal the complicated influences from (each) other(s) film cultures and also highlighting the shared fears explored in the films, fears that clearly transcend cultural and geographic boundaries.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes»

Look at similar books to Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes»

Discussion, reviews of the book Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.