Techno-Horror in Hollywood: Japanese Anxieties, American Style

A CONTINUING SURVEY OF TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY

Techno-Horror in Hollywood Japanese Anxieties, American Style he recent stream of Hollywood ible communication networks that now adaptations of Asian horror weave round the planet. An announcer Tfilms shows no sign of dry- declares that we “can now be on the ing up. The Grudge 2 was released this Internet anywhere in the world,” and October, and Tom Cruise is report- a shot of spreading cell-phone net- edly set to produce a remake of a fearful works is eerily reminiscent of a shot Hong Kong/Thai flick about a corneal in Outbreak, the Dustin Hoffman film transplant gone awry, Gin Gwai (The about the potential spread of an Ebola- Eye). Especially interesting is the recent like infection. The implication is clear: focus of Japanese horror films and their like any other contagion, the virus- American remakes on the perils of like spread of information technology ubiquitous modern technology—cell could prove to be an extremely dan- phones, computers, handheld devices. gerous threat. Pulse, released in summer 2006 (and The title dissolves into a modern on DVD this December), is the latest in college campus where Josh (Jonathan the “J-Horror” genre. Written by Wes Tucker) is chased by some unknown, Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street) but obviously evil, figure, and must and Ray Wright, the fright-fest is an push through a throng of obliviously adaptation of the 2001 Japanese film contented young adults—all of them Kairo. In the title sequence, images and using some sort of wireless device. sound bites remind us of just how dif- Upon reaching the library, Josh is ficult it is to get away from the invis- attacked by a ghostly demon that drains

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Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. STATE OF THE ART him of what can only be described as of modern technology (Mattie’s cell his “life force.” We then cut to a bar phone) when it finally dawns on them where Josh’s girlfriend, and our pro- that the device is acting as a conduit for tagonist, Mattie (Kristen Bell), shares the demons attacking them. The final a drink with her friends. The omni- shot is more colorful than every scene presence of communication technology that came before it; driving off into a is again emphasized when a character society devoid of modern apparatuses, two stools away from her sends a text- Mattie and Dexter are welcomed by a message asking if she wants to dance. spectacularly vibrant sunrise, symbol- (I would accuse the director of overkill izing renewal and hope. if I hadn’t seen the same thing during In this, and many other respects, Pulse my college years.) is far more optimistic than its source As the movie progresses, we learn material. Kairo is less preoccupied with that ghosts have found a way to trav- showing people using technology; el along our wireless networks—the director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is content Internet and cell phones, primarily; for to let people infer the level of addic- some reason television and radio waves tion themselves. Instead of a crowded do not transmit them—and invade college campus and a bar, Kairo’s nar- our homes. A website spreads across rative begins in a greenhouse, sur- computer systems like a virus, asking rounded by nature. Instead of showing those logged on, “Would you like to techno-obsession on-screen, Kurosawa meet a ghost?” Characters are then chooses to delve into the psychologi- plagued by specters who suck the life cal repercussions of living in a society force from their victims, driving them more connected superficially, but lack- to despair and suicide, or death from a ing the real, human contact that comes virus that spreads throughout the bod- with face-to-face interactions. ies of the infected, leaving nothing but This psychoanalysis distinguishes ashy remains. Kairo from the average horror movie; After discovering a comput- though there are a few frightening er virus that might be able to wipe moments, the scares come largely out the ghosts’ network, Mattie and from tense moods instead of sudden handy computer geek Dexter (Ian noises or unexpected sights. To an Somerhalder) travel to the heart of the American viewer, Kairo is less a horror infestation and upload the virus. As film than an existential meditation on with most of the recent wave of hor- isolation in an amazingly intercon- ror movies, however, there’s a twist: nected world. When one character The virus doesn’t work. As the system suggests he logged on to the Internet is rebooting, the pair flees the ever- to make some friends, another notes more apocalyptic-looking city—trash- that, “People don’t really connect, you strewn streets, crashing passenger jets, know....We all live totally separately.” and so forth—ditching the last vestige Jasper Sharp, coauthor of The

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Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese In The Ring, after viewing the tape, Film and coeditor of the Japanese- Rachel (Naomi Watts) begins to take cinema website MidnightEye.com, notice of society’s addiction to the explained that “major plot points are medium: Standing on her apartment leapfrogged [in Kairo] to focus on balcony she sees that every apartment their repercussions, leaving ambiguous near her has a television blaring; when holes in the narratives. What seem like Rachel and a friend discover the room crucial characters are killed off early in the barn Samara was forced to sleep on, the survivors remaining disassoci- in, they note that the girl’s only com- ated from one another—we don’t see panion was a television; TVs are even them bonding or working together in omnipresent away from the city, as the [Kurosawa’s] films very much, and original cursed tape comes from a VCR their motivations are left obscure.... in the countryside that failed to record The resulting disjointedness empha- a football game. sizes the ideas that he is trying to Entire subplots are absent from the express—the disconnection individuals American release (including the notion feel with one another, with society as a that Samara is the daughter of a sea whole, and ultimately with reality.” demon) that were meant, in the Japanese The endings of the Japanese and original, to weave apprehensions about American versions have starkly dif- technology with larger human stories. ferent subtexts. While Pulse’s pro- Eric White explores this theme in an tagonists approach the horizon on an essay in the 2005 book Japanese Horror upbeat, even hopeful note, Kairo’s lone Cinema: By prominently featuring mod- survivor flees Japan on a boat buffeted ern gadgets, Ringu “associates ubiqui- by choppy waters, uncertain of the fate tous technological mediation—that is, awaiting her. the cameras, television sets, videocas- The current J-Horror boom was sette recorders, telephones, and other anticipated by the 1998 Japanese film such hardware foregrounded through- Ringu, remade in America as The out the film—with the intrusion of Ring in 2002. In both versions, televi- ‘posthuman’ otherness into contempo- sion sets and videocassette recorders rary cultural life.” These modern evils (instead of wireless networks) serve are sublimated, however, into the tradi- as the conduit of evil; after viewing a tional Japanese methods of storytelling. cursed videotape filled with disturbing In another essay in the book, Richard images, victims have only seven days J. Hand points out that J-Horror films to live. At the end of that week, an evil adapt modern technologies within little girl (named Sadako in the origi- traditional Japanese artforms, “often nal and Samara in the remake) crawls juxtaposing the arcane with the con- through the nearest television screen temporary or the mundane with the in order to attack her prey, literally extraordinary in carefully developed scaring them to death. structures. A videotape or a PC, for

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Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. STATE OF THE ART example, becomes like an ancient curse mysterious sexual predators, then Yu- in Ringu and [Kairo], respectively.” mi’s husband is stalked by his jealous, Japan is not the only Asian nation pregnant, spurned lover—and then to treat horrifically the encroach- entering the realm of the fantastical, as ment of technology into everyday Jin-hie haunts the journalist. life. Consider the South Korean flick, Of course, Asian cinema doesn’t hold Phone. While “horror hadn’t been a a monopoly on the theme of “technolo- significant genre in Korea before the gy as threat,” but most such American Japanese version of Ring,” accord- releases—like The Terminator—are ing to Sharp, Phone echoes some of usually larger than life action flicks. the technological anxieties seen in its Asian techno-horror movies, by con- Japanese predecessors. trast, are more intimate and in a sense Like Ringu, Phone relies on an artifact more relatable: While we’re not all of modern technology (a cell phone) as adulterers or murderers, most of us a means of transmitting the curse of have cell phones. And personal com- a vengeful spirit. A reporter (Ji-won puters. And televisions. Ha) hiding from a stalker is plagued by “Horror movies are best when they threatening phone calls. After changing give expression to wider cultural anxi- her number to a new, cursed one, the eties,” Sharp points out. “The recent daughter of Ji-Won’s friend, Ho-jeong Japanese horror films don’t see technol- (Yu-mi Kim), answers the phone and ogy in itself as a threat...[technology] becomes infected by the insidious hex. merely provides a conduit for darker The movie takes a number of twists more threatening forces to manifest and turns until it is discovered that the themselves through.” Unease with the evil ghost is that of a young girl Jin-hie modern world has created a demand (Ji-yeon Choi), who has been walled for films that portray technology as up in Yu-mi’s home, entombed with a growing menace; ever increasing her cell phone in hand. The phone, it penetration by technology into our turns out, was used by Jin-hie in the lives means that this anxiety will, in commission of an adulterous affair all likelihood, be with us—and on the with Yu-mi’s husband. It is also an screen—for quite some time. object of constant threat—first in the —Sonny Bunch is an assistant editor at real world, as Ji-won is stalked by the The Weekly Standard.

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