Asian Cinema - Volume 22, Issue 1, 2011

The following article provides an introduction to the history of the Asian Cinema Studies Society, the extended version of which will follow in the next issue.

This paper explores three Japanese vampire films directed by Michio Yamamoto for Toho Studios, Chi o suu ningyo (Legacy of Dracula 1970), Chio suu me (Lake of Dracula 1971), and Chi o suu bara (Evil of Dracula 1974). These films raise interesting issues about the international nature of horror production during this period, and, in particular, the ways in which Japanese cinema incorporates generic conventions developed in the West. The paper identifies indeterminate qualities within the films and argues that this makes it difficult to place them definitively within either a national or an international context. It is suggested that accounts of horror would benefit from taking fuller account of the playful, improvisatory elements evident not just within Yamamoto’s work but more widely in the genre.

Following Hong Kong’s reunification with China in 1997, it became a “Special Administrative Region” (SAR). This meant that Hong Kong filmmakers now had wider access to distribution and co-production deals with the mainland. In this article, through a case study of the 2008 film, Painted Skin, I consider how the makers of a supernaturally based work have negotiated these industrial changes within their film, in particular, the stricter censorship laws in operation on the mainland. The article argues that while Painted Skin is adapted from a familiar source and in a long tradition of Hong Kong horror films, the historically specific set of circumstances operating around its production and release reveal how central this historical specificity is to any understanding of it as a contemporary Hong Kong horror film.

What makes a Korean horror film Korean? Relatively little has been published to date in English on this topic, and what has been discussed frequently concentrates on Korean horror film’s renaissance at the millennial fin-de-siècle. This paper considers the inception of the horror genre in 1960s’ Korean cinema through a detailed case study of A Devilish Murder (Salinma 1965, dir. Lee Yong-min). By returning to the 1960s, a specific strand of Korean horror cinema can be traced, one created through associations between modernity, changing ideas of domestic space, and gendered relationships on one hand, and cinematic techniques predicated upon melodrama and flashbacks on the other.

This article explores the creation, discourses, and distribution of the 2004 New Thai horror film Shutter. A high-grossing film nationally and internationally, Shutter is based in Bangkok and follows a story of supernatural revenge by the spirit of a young upcountry woman who returns to wreak vengeance upon the men and former boyfriend who abused her in life. While considered by Bangkok fans to be the “best” Thai horror ever and “the only genuinely scary Thai movie,” this paper will argue that Shutter ironically signalled a deliberate departure from traditional Thai horror aesthetics and narrative structure. Instead, shaped in favor of a pan-Asian “look” and appeal and one familiar to non-Thai viewers (through films such as Ringu, etc.), it thereby paradoxically achieved success as a “Thai film” while erasing many cultural specificities of Thai cinema. Significantly, its 2008 Hollywood remake was set in Japan starring American actors. This paper explores the ramifications of such redesigning to both the Thainess of Shutter’s subject matter and its wider social implications.

The Japanese V-Cinema Guinea Pig (Za Ginipiggu) series (1985-1988) are often seen by critics such as Sharp, as indicative of the worse excesses of Japanese cinema. Given the nature of the films and their limited availability, it is not surprising that there has been little critical discussion of the series. Existing critical approaches are sharply split between those critics who seek to legitimize the films as contesting the dominant ideology of Japanese national cinema at the time (McRoy, 2008: 15-47) and/or in terms of cinematic technique (Hunter, 1998: 143-150), and those that interpret the films in much the same way as Sharp does (Galloway, 2006: 178). The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the gender politics of the Guinea Pig films as it is the female body -- more often than not -- that is clinically dissected, violated, and exploited for the [male] gaze in the Guinea Pig series. Secondly, the paper considers how the mechanics by the Guinea Pig films are marketed in the West as in opposition to the mainstream in order to anchor their “underground” and “cult” status at a time when Asian cinema had been branded as “Extreme.”

This article undertakes a thematic and aesthetic analysis of The Isle (Seom 2002, dir. Kim Ki-duk) and conceptualizes the theme of disavowal in association with UK audience expectations of popular and “extreme” Asian cinema. In addition, this work also seeks to reframe Kim beyond Asia extreme in a framework around intimacy and pain more akin to European extreme cinema. Via close reading, the complex representations of brutal intimacy found in this film can, I argue, be understood in-line with the Korean concept of “han,” marginality, and masochism. Considering formal and stylistic ellipses within the text, I argue that The Isle opens up a space for audiences to consider what is disavowed, unseen, and unsaid in Kim’s work.

This paper explores the transnationalism of Miike Takashi’s approach to film genres. Film genre has often been held as a stabilizing and internationalizing paradigm of film production, distribution, and reception, likewise with the increasingly transnational focus of Miike’s work that has accompanied his growing notoriety and fame with critics and cineastes, predominantly those outside Japan, where his fame is marginal. The paper also explores ways in which Miike’s transnational approach to genre problematizes and intervenes in transnational cinematic struggles by offering challenges to existing and homogenizing structures of genre and language. By looking at Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) as the definitive example of Miike’s transcultural generic work, the argument will examine the role of “gatekeeper auteurs” such as Tarantino and Eli Roth, in establishing Miike as the nomadic figure in world cinema.

When The Tears of the Black Tiger (Fah talai jone 2000, dir. Wisit Sasanatieng) was reviewed in Sight and Sound, reviewer Edward Buscombe expressed surprise at the existence of a Thai Western and concluded that the film was “ultimately, about nothing at all.” Such debates had already been well rehearsed around Italian Westerns, the paradigmatic “inauthentic” adaptation of an “authentic” genre. Asian cinema’s connection to the Western can be traced back to Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, which was reworked across diverse genres, including the Western. Two further “Asian Westerns” have been distributed internationally more recently, Sukiyaki Western Django (Sukiyaki Uesutan Jango 2007, dir. Miike Takashi) and The Good, the Bad, the Weird (Joheun nom nabbeun nom isanghan nom 2008, dir. Kim Ji-woon). While individual films have unmistakeable local resonances “lost” Thai cinema, South Korea’s Manchurian action films of the 1960s, the interplay between Japanese chanbara and the Western -- the common transcultural referent is not the American Western, but the Italian one. This paper examines the relationship between the “Asian” and Italian Western, and considers how the latter might inform the transnational ambitions of the former.

This article argues that the Japanese zom-com, with Wild Zero (2001, dir. Takeuchi Tetsuro) and Tokyo Zombie (Tokyo Zonbi 2005, dir. Sato Sakichi) as examples, is the result of cultural borrowing from American popular culture and an eclectic mix of generic influences. The zom-com films from Japan rarely reference traditional folklore that has been a central source in the history of Japanese horror cinema. Instead, the current discussion considers the two films alongside the zombie canon, and explores how they exist as transnational cult that can be understood through the academic discourse on taste and distinction. In the age of global production and consumption, differences are minimized in these films’ “imageries of Japan” and the producers’ marketing, rendering them familiar trash and engendering their cult status. The article concludes that it is the trans-cultural quality of these Japanese films rather than “the dead that walk” which underpins them as cult movies.

During the 1970s, Shaw Brothers and Hammer Films sought to blend kung fu spectacle with traditional genres. The fruits of this endeavor The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and Shatter, both 1974 were castigated by mainstream critics as idiosyncratic and incoherent. The films’ appropriation by cult audiences, however, is predicated on precisely their purported incoherence. This essay argues that incoherence constitutes a tacit and under-theorized criterion for cult movies, and insofar as it is conceived as a homogenous phenomenon, tends to offer an uninformative barometer of a cult film’s value. In contrast, I propose several levels of coherence, the better to specify the cult film’s unities and disunities across a range of dimensions. Centrally, I explore the alleged incoherence forged by fusing kung fu with the norms of horror (Legend) and crime thriller (Shatter). Arguing that both films obey canonized principles of storytelling, I go on to examine the effects that their apparent incoherence has upon the viewer’s experience. The paper also points toward the relevance of transnational coproduction for grasping both the viewer’s activity and the critical neglect of coherence in the Shaws-Hammer movies.

This article examines the international release of the South Korean film Save the Green Planet! and argues that this is an example of a film whose cult reputation was pre-sold to audiences on the basis of constructed associations between Korean cinema and excessive violence. This article also considers the divided critical reception of Save the Green Planet! as experts from different fields argued over the value and meaning of the film.

Many essays in this volume attempt to emphasize how the significance of a horror and/cult film does not and should not limit itself to its heuristic, epistemic value; in other words, as a vehicle to “learn“ about that culture and nation-state. Rather, with an accumulation of enough scholarship on Asian horror films, the scope and methods can vary, not to pigeonhole films to dominant theoretical frameworks, but to provide nuanced explanations to the relationship between films and their surroundings culture, industry, fandom, and aesthetics. The essays in this volume certainly take us in that direction plurality of interest, topic, and methodology.

The article examines the construction of the World Expo Garden in Shanghai in 2010, in relation to Jia Zhangke’s 2004 film The World. It argues that during the process of large-scale demolition and reconstruction involved in the creation of the World Expo Garden, one cannot ignore the numerous migrant workers who swarmed into the city and contributed tremendously to the completion of one project after another. This article argues that in spite of their pivotal role in providing cheap labor to rebuild the city, migrant workers have not been afforded any space in the spectacular tapestry of Shanghai. This article examines how Jia Zhangke’s film is of particular interest to the investigation of the crisscross of migrant workers and the cityscape, and argues that The World is not so much a showcase of the cosmopolitan city of Beijing than an internal perspective of the city beneath the veneer of its prosperity.

This article examines the effects of political corruption in India, perceiving it as one of the major detriments for the nation’s growth and a major obstacle to the functioning of democracy and the rule of law, and arguing that its effect on the social fabric of society is the most damaging as it undermines people’s trust in the political system, institutions, and its leadership. This article examines the portrayal of corruption and the alienation of the citizen in recent popular Telugu films, focusing in particular on Bharateeyudu (Shankar, 1996), Tagore (VV. Vinayak, 2003) and Aparichitudu (Shankar, 1996), arguing that corruption, political as well as bureaucratic, has been the sub text if not the main theme of many Telugu films over the decades. It argues that the films are an attempt to reinstate the citizens, the middle class with both their rights and responsibilities, as the bulwark of the polity.

This article examines the Indian reproductions of Western films Rebecca and Prisoner of Zenda, arguing that they have led not just to imitations, but total appropriations of the themes, even though in the main framework the films follow the script of the originals closely. This article examines the two Indian films, Kohra (1964) and Jhinder Bondi (1961), arguing that they not only adapt, recast, and retell the stories of Rebecca and Prisoner of Zenda, but most importantly, reinvent an Indian setting and an era, especially with the aim of making them super hit movies. While these are popular movies, meant to entertain the audience — in the same way gothic and adventure stories are meant to capture the audience’s gaze through suspense and thrill — we do notice fine touches that lift them above the level of blockbusters. It will point out how the Indianization really helps us to appreciate the divergences of eastern and western cultures, where they part and where they meet.

This article examines the relationship between gender and cinema, taking inspiration from Denise Riley’s provocative book Am I That Name? Feminism and the Category of “Women” in History (1988), in which Riley argues that the term ‘woman’ is a historical category that is ‘discursively constructed’. This article argues that categories of gender, and by extension our understanding of sexuality, have shifted or broadened in meanings over the centuries, and thus questions the implications of Riley’s claim for cinema? It questions how images of women, especially, speak to the spectator, whether the spectator is positioned as masculine/ feminine or male/ female, and whether femininity presented in a particular way through the cinematic lenses.

This paper explores male subjectivities that encompass primordial democratic consciousness in both 1930s and 1980s China. Drawing on Jurgen Habermas’s conceptualization of the public sphere, this paper identifies an imagined modern public sphere against Chinese urban representations. In both Crossroads (1937) and The Trouble Shooters (1988), male protagonists adopt the role of torchbearer in the vibrant urban sphere, working toward a newly defined social justice. Asserting a new male subjectivity evolved with the imaginative public good, providing a training ground for Chinese democracy. All of the above mirror some prominent features of the public sphere, including the masculine aspect of Habermas’s idealisation of the concept, as pinpointed by Nancy Fraser (1992).

This article examines the changes in the Chinese government’s attitude to homosexuality in the last 20 years, in relation to the Zhand Yuan’s film East Palace, West Palace (1996). It argues that the real controversy of the movie lies in the power relationship between the heterosexual male authority and gay men, which is illustrated by the police officer and the gay writer he catches in the park. This paper will first examine the figure of the heterosexist authority and its disciplinary power. Following the discussion of the heterosexist authority’s potential homosexuality, the paper will further illustrate how the gay man plots and stages a sadomasochistic play during the police questioning. Finally, this paper will focus on the verbal exchange between the police officer and the gay man during the interrogation to discuss the power relationship between the heterosexist authority and gay men.

The purpose of this article is to examine how The President’s Barber (Im Chan Sang, 2004) and The President’s Last Bang (Im Sang Soo, 2005) represent the Park Chung Hee era. Before these two films were produced, some Korean films had dealt with the 1970s. They can be categorized into two groups by mode of representation. First, the nostalgic films deal with this era through the form of coming-of-age films or a first love story in which the main characters are high school students. Second, the retrospective films examine the brutality or absurdness of this era. The improvement of Korean democratization enables these films to be produced, and the economic crisis of 1997-1998 contributes to the production of these films — films that respond to the right wing’s reaction, the Park Chung Hee syndrome, and the economic crisis.