Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-07T23:16:44.838Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Transformations of the Monstrous Feminine in the New Asian Female Ghost Films

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Abstract

Since the financial success of the American remake of a Japanese horror film called Ringu (Hideo Nakata 1998), remaking a well-accepted Asian scary film in its domestic or pan-Asian market has been a recurring phenomenon in the American film industry for the past decade. The particular style of horror films which this article identifies as the “New Asian Female Ghost Films” has been the most welcomed Asian genre for the Hollywood project for reworking Asian cinematic originals. Beyond the commonality in narrative and thematic sharing, the New Asian Female Ghost Films are characterized as the specific iconography of the monstrous feminine with other gendered/gendering imageries and imaginations to reflect as well as the countries’ long traditions of female ghost filmmaking and the changed socio-cultural matrixes.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Boon, KA (2007) Ontological anxiety made flesh: The zombie in literature, film and culture. In Scot, N (ed.) Monsters and The Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, pp. 3344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brophy, P (1986) Horrality – The textuality of contemporary horror films, Screen, 27(1): 213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chang, Kyung-sup (1999) Compressed modernity and its discontents: South Korean Society in transition, Economy and Society, 28(1): 3055.Google Scholar
Chow, EN-L (1987) The development of feminist consciousness among Asian American women, Gender and Society, 1: 284299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Creed, B (1993) The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Erens, PB (1996) The stepfather: Father as monster in the contemporary horror film, in Grant, BK (ed.) The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, pp. 352363.Google Scholar
Foster, MD (2008) The question of the slit-mouthed woman: Contemporary legend, the beauty industry, and women's weekly magazines in Japan, Signs: J. of Women in Culture and Society, 32(3): 128.Google Scholar
Freeland, CA (2009) Feminist frameworks for horror films. In Braudy, L, Cohen, M (eds) Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. New York and Oxford: OUP, pp. 627648.Google Scholar
Grant, BK (1996) Introduction, in Grant, BK (ed.) The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, pp. 112.Google Scholar
Hand, RJ (2005) Aesthetics of cruelty: Traditional Japanese theatre and the horror film in J. McRoy (ed.) Japanese Horror Cinema, pp. 1828. Honolulu, hi: University of Hawaii Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harper, S (2003) They’re us: Representations of women in George Romero's “Living Dead” series, Intensities. The Journal of Cult Media, 3, mediawolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/females-in-romero.pdfGoogle Scholar
Keltner, SK (2011) Kristeva: Thresholds. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Kim Hwa-young, T (2006) Increase in divorce rate among long married couples, Asiannews.it, 5 October, www.asianews.it/news-en/Increase-in-divorce-rate-among-long-married-couples-7392.htmlGoogle Scholar
Kristeva, J (1980) Pouvoirs de l’horreur. Essai sur l’abjection. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Kumagai, GL (1978) The Asian women in America historical perspective, Bridge: An Asian American Perspective, 6(4): 1720.Google Scholar
Littlewood, I (1996) The Idea of Japan: Western Images, Western Myths. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.Google Scholar
Oliver, K (1991) Kristeva's imaginary father and the crisis in the paternal function, Diacritics, 21(2/3): 4363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ozawa, E (2006) Remaking corporeality and spatiality: U.S. adaptations of Japanese horror films, 49th Parallel, 19, fortyninthparalleljournal.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/9-ozawa-remaking-corporeality.pdfGoogle Scholar
Raz, J, Raz, AE (1996) America meets Japan: A journey for real between two imaginaries, Theory, Culture & Society, 13(3): 153178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swenson, T (2007) “What kind of culture could produce these?”: Appeal of the exotic as entry into Japanese culture, Ôsaka Jogakuin Daigaku Kiyo, 4: 103122; wilmina.ac.jp/ojc/edu/kiyo_2007/kiyo_04_pdf/07.pdfGoogle Scholar
Tajima, RE (1989) Lotus blossoms don’t bleed: Images of Asian women. In Asian Women United of California (eds) Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings by and about Asian American Women. Boston: Beacon Press, pp. 308317.Google Scholar
Tipton, EK (2002) Modern Japan: A Social and Political History. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uchida, A (1998) The orientalization of Asian women in America, Women's Studies International Forum, 21(2): 161174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, R (1986) Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yoda, T (2006) The rise and fall of maternal society: G, labor, and capital in contemporary Japan. In Yoda, T, Harootunian, H (eds) Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural life from the Recessionalry 1990s to the Present. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 239298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar